Little Boy Lost and Little Boy Blue
by SCWLC
Summary: Destiny has a sort of inevitability, no matter how much you change the past. The tale of an alternate Tommy Oliver.
1. Prologue

Title: Little Boy Lost and Little Boy Blue

Author: SCWLC

Disclaimer: Good heavens no, I own none of this. I'd be a lot richer if I did.

Rating: PG-13

Summary: Destiny has a sort of inevitability, no matter how much you change the past. The tale of an alternate Tommy Oliver.

Notes: Okay, so this idea sprang from the question of a different Tommy and what was supposed to be a sort of buddy epic about him and Billy. It wound up more about Tommy than Billy, but these things happen. The fic is technically complete, but I may yet make an alteration or two if someone comes up with a great idea.

* * *

Prologue

Pauline and Matthew Oliver were a kind couple, one who saw the numbers of orphaned and abandoned children in the care of the state systems and decided they wanted to ensure at least one of those children grew up with a loving home and family. With no close relatives of their own, the couple had bonded over this lack and wanted to provide a child with even fewer roots a better chance than luck of the draw in foster care.

Thus it came to be that they jumped through hoop after hoop, dealt with red tape and nearly offensive questions about their motivations in adopting and whether or not they would abuse a child in their care. It took years, but they eventually brought home a darling little boy. He was American Indian, what people were starting to call 'Native American', and while they didn't know anything in particular about Amerindian culture, there were some vague plans in their minds about trying to at least connect him to something to do with that.

Then again, it all depended on Thomas, little Tommy Oliver. What would he want? Would he be interested? Would he play football or baseball? Would he be an artist or a scientist? Pauline and Matt didn't care either way. The important thing was to give him the chances to become what he wanted to be as best they could.

His first day back from kindergarten, age four, and he'd discovered karate in a video they showed in class. Obligingly they signed him up for it, only to be delighted that the man who taught the class thought Tommy was his best student. Hardworking, devoted and interested in the discipline and history (inasmuch as a four-year-old could be), for the next two years Tommy's entire attention went to the study of karate, and the one thing his parents worried about were the battles they were going to have with him to do his homework when he started into grade one at school, instead of doing katas in the back yard.

Now, in one reality they worked something out and Tommy grew up a bit of a loner, but so devoted to his martial arts that by age fourteen he'd been the deadliest thing on two feet you could imagine, something the Power Rangers discovered to their great detriment.

But for every reality where things go one way, there's an infinity of others where it all goes differently. One might even say wrongly.

Six-year-old Tommy was picked up from school by police and learned a very important lesson in life that day. Sometimes people driving in cars get into wrecks with jerks who should have known to call a cab when they'd been drinking. And sometimes the injuries from those wrecks are so bad that the people go to sleep and never wake up.

He never saw Sensei Robert again. Because the universe chose to spite not only Tommy, but Pauline and Matt in its way. And the little boy they'd tried to save from being bounced around in an uncaring government system of foster care was tossed headlong into that system. Often into the worst that system had to offer. The only Indian kid in a sea of white, black and Hispanic, he never fit in. Too pale for the black kids, they bullied him. Too dark for the white ones, they bullied him too. He might have fit in with the Hispanic ones, middling dark and a lot more physical types to disappear into, but by the time he'd landed up in the seventh (eighth? Ninth? He'd lost count) foster home, going through just as many schools, he had a chip on his shoulder, a personal bubble that extended for miles and emotional walls keeping people away that no one could break down.

Sometimes he'd form pacts of mutual support with a solo Korean kid or someone else who was the only one of his or her 'kind', but his attitude tended to make others form ranks against him. And the bullying never stopped.

Gone was a pure devotion to perfecting his karate form. Tommy wanted to, but what was more important was getting respect. He took classes wherever and whenever he could, but it was a bit of king fu here, ninjutsu there, karate somewhere else and jujitsu in between. He learned to fight, learned to react to bullies by wading in fists first to shut them up, because no adult could be relied on to deal with them. One of his foster housemates jokingly called him The Punisher of the playground, but he rather liked that. Someone who saw the system wasn't working and stepped in to fill the gap.

The attitude that anyone who bullied anyone at all around him was going to get a concussion got him bounced out of even more schools even faster. That started bouncing him around the foster homes in the state even more. He didn't even bother unpacking most of the time, well aware he'd just be moving on the first time some jerk decided to steal another kid's lunch and he decided to intervene. He never started anything, just made sure to finish it.

Two abusive foster homes in a row, leading to his running away twice, meant that when he found himself in a third, thirteen-year-old Tom (Tommy was too childish) had enough. He knew his parents had adopted him in California before moving out to the East Coast. It made his decision to put as much distance as he could between the foster homes in New York State and himself as possible seem almost fated. Once he got to Angel Grove after a year constantly on the move, pretending he was a few years older, scraping by with odd jobs and begging, his silence and the way he'd fallen through the cracks back east meant that he was placed with a new foster family in the city where he was found.

They seemed decent sorts, didn't have any other foster kids living with them and made sure he got three square meals a day and clothes that fit, along with a suggestion he try the youth centre for karate classes along with a warning that aliens were invading with weird grey foot soldiers and he ought to be careful. If they didn't care all that much, he'd certainly had worse and it was novel to deal with adults who didn't greet him by asking what he'd done wrong so far that day.

Tom Oliver squared his shoulders and walked into Angel Grove High.


	2. New town, new school, new everything

Disclaimer: Good heavens no, I own none of this. I'd be a lot richer if I did.

Notes: So, I'm not quite sure of the schedule these chapters will be going up, nor am I totally sure how long they'll be. The other thing here is, I apologise if anyone has to break out a dictionary here to follow what Billy says, but I happen to have something of a sesquipedalian vocabulary myself (having a tendency to using big, fancy words) and so writing Billy is sort of fun for me because I don't have to edit myself.

* * *

Billy was vaguely aware of Jason testing someone into one of his more advanced classes in the background, but Kimberly had arrived at the youth centre, eyes wide and face filled with anxiety as she joined Zack, Trini and himself at their usual table. "Oh my God, you guys. You will not believe what happened right before last period."

"What has transpired that would be the cause of such trepidation on your part?" Billy asked.

Kim blinked a moment and Billy wondered idly if any of his friends, other than Trini, read actual books. Then Kim seemed to shake it off and said, "Okay, so I'm at my locker and Bulk and Skull are being Bulk and Skull, right? Out of nowhere, the new kid, the one with the long hair, he like, tells them to back off and I'm, like, thinking he's just kinda doing a chivalry sort of thing."

"That's not what's got you upset, though?" Zack asked, looking puzzled when Kim paused.

She hastily shook her head. "No, I just, like, don't know how to . . . it was actually kinda scary."

Trini stiffened. "It wasn't, you know," she brought a hand to the small of her back, the place they all stored their morphers. "Not to do with-"

"No," Kim assured her with alacrity. "It's just. When Bulk and Skull tried to start in on him, he just started, like, beating them up. And I mean, like, _really_ beating them up." Her eyes locked onto the door and she pointed. "There. See?"

Bulk and Skull made their bruised and limping way into the centre. Shuffling quietly, they settled down performing none of the shenanigans normal for them. "They look most unsettled," Billy admitted. "Are you declaring this to be a result of the fisticuffs they were engaged in with the new student?"

"The what?"

"The fight," Trini translated. "You think they're like that because of the fight?"

Kim nodded. "It was brutal. I've never seen anything like that. They ran away before it went on too long, but . . . it was more like when a putty gets ahold of someone."

Jason joined them at that point. "So, the new guy's worth moving up a few belts. I think I can test him out. I have to wonder though. I mean, he seems disciplined and willing to learn, so I can't figure out why he isn't better than he is."

He gestured towards the mats where the teen with long hair and slightly ratty sweats was collecting his things before leaving. Kimberly squeaked. "That's him!" she said.

Before Billy had a chance to verify she meant the youth that had injured Bulk and Skull, the pair spotted him and he spotted them. His face darkened and Bulk and Skull knocked over three tables and five people in their scramble to escape. "So it would seem."

"You may not want him in your class, Jase," Zack said, worriedly. "Kim says he pretty much beat Bulk and Skull to a pulp at school."

Frowning in concern, Jason said, "I'm not sure I can just tell him not to come. He's paid money, and I have to give him the benefit of the doubt."

The conversation had to be shelved at that point when Zordon called, sending them out to fight a monster in the mall.

Tom Oliver, however, remained an ongoing topic of discussion. He kept to himself, mostly, but sometimes there would be outbursts of a most disturbing degree of violence from him. He never seemed to act poorly in Jason's class, but the negative information received by the red ranger through various sources did prejudice him against Tom in class. Subtly, but nonetheless. Kimberly was also greatly overset by his continued presence.

Somehow, though, Billy continued to maintain a sense that there was something astray in their evaluation of Tom. He kept that hypothesis to himself and attempted to gather further data. It was in speech with one of his fellow 'geeks' as the colloquialism went, that the absent information finally was presented to him.

"So, Aaron had me upside-down," Bradley was saying. "He and his buddies are all set to give me a swirly, they know I get nauseous when I'm upside-down, and all of a sudden, there's Tom Oliver, just pounding them into the floor. I was terrified, believe you me."

Billy looked him over. He did not appear to be suffering any of the contusions normally associated with such a physical altercation. Those injuries were something Billy had developed an overfamiliarity with, due to his time as a ranger. "Did he injure you in some way?"

"No," said Bradley. "That's what's weird. They're all just lying there, half dead, and he turns to me like this is totally normal and asks if I'm okay and pulls me to my feet. When I ask him why he's asking, you know, in case he's planning to make sure I'm not fine once he's done, he just walked away."

"For one with his demonstrated antisocial tendencies, that does seem most unusual," Billy admitted, thinking very quickly on how to slot this new information into his data set.

Bradley smiled a little. "No kidding. I'll see you in science tomorrow." The other youth hurried off while Billy thought very hard.

Who, exactly, had Tom had his altercations with? When he completed his mental enumeration, Billy realised something very important. Every name on that list was an individual he had either seen or heard of acting to perform assault on another. That is, what teachers and other adults commonly termed bullying. Indeed, Tom never seemed to have any victims, save those who were known for such unsavoury assaulting activity.

He was quite certain he had the complete listing, as Kimberly considered it to be a hobby on par with her gymnastics and shopping, to keep abreast of the latest information being discussed among the students. Indeed, in her case it went quite beyond what could be termed gossip and into a complex information gathering network. Billy quite trusted the veracity of Kimberly's findings.

But this meant one important thing. Tom was not, as had been supposed by the student body, targeting individuals in random outbursts of violence, he had, in fact, been acting with specificity, reacting with vigilantism to situations he, perhaps, did not trust the authorities to effect change upon.

Billy meant to discuss the matter with his friends, Trini in particular, as she usually had an excellent and nuanced grasp of human motivation that assisted Billy quite often in parsing the more illogical behaviour of his schoolmates. But between his duties as a ranger, school and their various extracurriculars, there never seemed an appropriate time to broach the subject. By then it was too late.

"Billy," Ms. Applebee said one day. "Would you mind staying after class?"

"Of course not, Ms Applebee," he replied.

And after class, he stood facing Tom Oliver, who Billy had been informed was to get tutoring from him in . . . well . . . anything he could teach his fellow student. And meanwhile, Tom was looking at him with unease. Alone in the classroom, Billy took a deep breath and said, "So, I believe we should determine a time and location compatible to both our needs-"

"No need," Tom said. He looked darkly amused. "As much as I appreciate the thought, why don't we just tell her we did and you can do your own thing."

Billy's eyes narrowed. "I have been requested to give you assistance, and I will not allow your refusal to perform adequately dissuade me from making the attempt with all due effort."

The other's eyes flashed, and Billy wondered if he was about to find himself on the wrong end of Tom's anger. "You know, I know people don't expect me to amount to anything but pumping gas, but I really don't see how using big words to pump yourself up proves anything."

That . . . seemed a non sequitur. "I believe I am lacking in comprehension of the hypothesis regarding my linguistic usage you are proposing," Billy admitted. He needed Trini to translate for him, now.

An almost unendurable pause, then Tom said slowly. "You don't understand what I just said?"

"Neg . . . No. I am afraid I do not see what my generally sesquipedalian speech implies regarding your intellect."

"Sesqui . . . what?"

"I must apologise. My friend Trini, under more normal circumstances does what others refer to as 'translation' of my normal mode of communication. Without her, I'm afraid I lack somewhat in interlocutory skills."

Tom blinked. There was another pause, during which Billy wondered where Trini was. "If 'interlocutory' means talking, I see why you need a translator." He frowned. "You're not trying to make me look stupid?" he asked, clearly hesitant.

And what Tom had been saying before was suddenly blindingly clear. Tom thought Billy had been making fun of him by using those words. More, despite that he was the first person Billy had talked to in a while to put in the effort of understanding, besides Trini, Tom seemed to see himself as stupid. Billy had seen no evidence of that, and said, "Firstly, I have no reason to believe your intellectual capacity is any lower than the average in our grade, and second, as I said before, I will not avoid offering you the assistance of my tutoring simply because you do not wish to be inconvenienced."

Warily, the other youth said, "Okay then. Do you have any suggestions of where we should meet? I don't exactly have a lot going on, so most times after school would be fine by me." His whole demeanour suggested he thought Billy was going to be disappointed, but something in Billy, and it felt a little . . . Blue, it seemed to think Tom was worth the time investment. So, they made plans to meet at the local library.

The first thing Tom said to him when he arrived at the library table where the other was waiting was, "Sesquipedalian might be accurate in describing how you talk, but you're not gonna find many people who know what it means." A volume of one of the complete multi-volume dictionaries sat on the table in front of him. The one containing sesquipedalian. "And you might consider using conversational instead of 'interlocutory'. I think it's more accurate anyhow."

Billy reached out, tugging over the extant dictionary volumes and compared the two definitions. Tom was correct, both on the count of popular comprehension, and on the matter of linguistic accuracy. "I think you might be correct," he said. When he smiled at the other youth, something indefinable in Tom lightened.

It took some time for Billy to determine the difficulties Tom was having in following the mathematics they began with, a difficulty complicated by Tom's frequent bafflement over Billy's choice in words, but he did. There were gaps in Tom's understanding, as though someone had tried to teach him concepts without ensuring he had completed learning simpler ones. Indeed, some simpler concepts Tom appeared to have no notion they existed.

"I never stayed at any one school too long," he admitted the third time Billy ran into another basic concept Tom had never heard of. "I think sometimes I left places before we got to one thing, then got to the new school after they'd already learned it."

"How many schools?" Billy asked, curious. It sounded a little inefficient, for all that the changes in venue might have been interesting.

Tom's head tilted, his mouth and fingers moving in concert that suggested he was counting. "Twenty? Maybe? I missed a lot when I was with the Robinsons," he said shrugging. "And that was the year I headed for California anyhow."

"With the Robinsons?" Billy asked, frowning. "Weren't your family-"

An almost mocking smile crossed Tom's face. "I'm a foster care kid," he said. As amused as he looked, he also looked bleak. "Not much of a worry to the system if I'm in school or in traction." He cracked his neck then. "I don't have a family. I was adopted, then my adoptive parents died. No one around to give a damn one way or another." Then he looked at the homework in front of them. "So, explain this fraction, decimal point thing again."

Billy bent to the work. Some hurdle had been crossed or some door had been walked through just now and he wasn't sure what.

When he caught up to the others later on at the youth centre, he found himself watching Jason's class, the one Tom had tested into, and wondered if Tom had suffered a similar setback with martial arts as he clearly had with mathematics. Jason's arrival at the table cemented Billy's theory. "I don't understand him," he said. "He's talented, he clearly picks everything up quickly and he even said that he's had classes before. So, what kind of a slacker is he that he's not that good?"

"He has had some distinct disadvantages over the course of his education that, I believe, carry over to other extracurricular educational activities, such as karate," Billy said.

Jason blinked at him. "What?"

Billy was struck again, as Jason just turned to Trini to translate, how different the others were from Tom. They knew they could rely on Trini to explain, rely on Billy to rephrase if they truly needed him to, while Tom seemed unable to trust such a thing. By contrast, Tom thus put in the effort of following Billy's often overly verbose use of language, instead of following the irritating pattern of Billy's friends who didn't even seem to try anymore.

"Billy thinks that Tom's had problems with school that are related to why he hasn't learned karate right," Trini said.

"Like what?" Kimberly's eager question made Billy pause. Tom hadn't asked him to keep it a secret, but the way he'd admitted to being in foster care made Billy think there might be a reason for the dark humour being applied to the situation.

Ultimately, he had the feeling that telling the others might be releasing a confidence. "I don't think Tom would appreciate it if I told you," Billy said hesitantly.

And Zack chose the most appalling reason he could find in his interpretation of that statement. "Did he threaten you?"

The others came on point like a pack of wolves. "No!" Billy exclaimed in haste. "I simply do not wish to violate a confidence for no other reason than the curiosity of others!"

"He was told it as a secret and he doesn't want to tell anyone just because you're all curious," Trini said quickly. "Really?" she said to Billy.

Nodding quickly, he said, "Have you ever noticed that when Tom has one of his altercations, it's only with school bullies?"

His attempt to distract the others worked to an extent, but it just made Jason's face darken again. "So, what? He thinks he's The Punisher or something?"

Billy sighed. Convincing the others that Tom wasn't the standard of all that was negative in human nature was going to take more work than he'd thought.

* * *

Billy had been tutoring Tom for weeks, even showing up with the homework he'd missed when the inevitable suspension for fighting happened. The grades that Tom had barely managed to keep at a fifty percent suddenly shot up into C grade territory. He was earning sixties in his classes, something he couldn't remember having ever done. Frankly, Billy was clearly even more of a genius than he was reputed to be around school if he could make someone as dumb as Tom start getting decent grades.

For the first time Tom had been invited to Billy's house. It was another first in a long time. Tom couldn't remember the last time anyone had wanted to have him in their home. He was sitting in Billy's living room, looking at all the books on the wall, when something caught his eye. _The Dinosaur Heresies_. As he looked more carefully, he saw that there was a whole bunch of closely-packed books on dinosaurs.

His tutor was in the kitchen, something about snacks and interruptions, and Tom, knowing he should ask permission, knowing he shouldn't do it, grabbed the book up and stuffed it into his bag. He'd give it back, he promised himself, he was just borrowing.

To make up for his sort-of theft, he really tried with Billy that afternoon, harder than usual because the least he could do after walking away with one of Billy's family's books was to not force the guy to deal with Tom's usual low level intellect. He stayed up all night reading, at first planning to do it so that he'd only have the book the one night, but by the end of the fourth chapter he was absorbed in physiology, statistical distribution and the mysteries that had made him never miss a Nova dinosaur special if he could.

The next day at school he was trying to work out how to slip the thing into Billy's bag or locker without Billy noticing, when the blue-clad teen in question showed up at his locker, eyeing Tom angrily. "Where is it?" Billy demanded. It seemed anger did away with the too-weird words Billy normally used.

Inwardly, Tom cursed. He'd probably alienated the only person in the whole school who didn't hate him with this stunt. "Here," he said, and handed Billy the book. "I'm sorry," he offered.

Billy looked stunned. And still angry. "I believe the words of the kindergarten instructor I had spring to mind," he said sharply. "If you were sorry you wouldn't have done it."

One of Billy's friends, the black kid who seemed to have more of a sense of humour than he knew what to do with, popped up out of nowhere. "You _stole_ something of Billy's?" he demanded, sounding as though Tom had ripped off his granny's heirloom jewels.

"Well, he has it back," Tom snapped and walked away. He'd known it was all too good to last. He just wasn't cut out to get along with other people. Still, he wished he'd just kept the urge to himself. He stayed out of Billy's way the whole day, and on seeing the black cloud of anger and mistrust hovering over Jason at the youth centre, decided he might as well just give up on those karate lessons. He'd just have to look somewhere else that the instructor wasn't best friends with a guy Tom had stolen from.

The distance lasted a week, and then he caught those morons Bulk and Skull breaking some nerd's science project. From the bits scattered on the floor it was pretty clear the girl had spent a lot of time and maybe even a lot of money on the whatever-it-was. All that anger bouncing around inside him found a valid outlet and Tom got a second suspension and a warning. Bulk and Skull got a trip to the nurse's office.

He was sitting in his room, feeling morose and staring at the one dinosaur toy he still had left from back when he still had parents, when Mrs. Lewis poked her head in and informed him, "Tom? You've got a friend here to see you."

And then Billy was there, blond hair, glasses, overalls and a blue striped shirt. In Tom's room. Billy had actually come to the foster home. He'd actually come in and . . . "What are you doing here?"

"I thought you might need the school assignments," Billy told him, handing him the papers.

"Thanks."

Tom waited. Billy just stood there, fidgeting with his glasses, his overalls, and looking nervous. "Your room is unexpectedly lacking in adornment," Billy said suddenly.

He'd gotten better at following what Billy said, especially after he'd glanced through a few books in the library for SAT word tests. "Why should it? Foster homes don't last that long for me. No point in making myself at home, it isn't one. Why are you still here?"

"What did you want the book for?" Billy asked. "It is not a text of great monetary value, even less so in the limited venues of sale in Angel Grove. What were you planning to do with it?"

"Read it," Tom said bluntly.

Billy was staring at Tom as though he'd never seen anything like him before. "So you took it without permission?" he finally asked, sounding confused.

It was self-pity of the sort Tom tried not to broadcast to people. It just slipped out. "And would you have let me borrow it if I asked? Doubt it." Tom snapped.

"Of course I would," Billy said. "You've never demonstrated anything but respect for the possessions of others. Your attack on Bulk and Skull over the damage to Priscilla's science fair entry more than clarifies your position on that."

"What?" Tom gaped. No one had ever _ever_ suggested they would trust the long-haired, violently inclined teen with anything.

Billy just stared at him for several long moments, and Tom wondered what the other teen was thinking. "Were you interested more in the tyrannosaurus on the cover?" he finally asked.

"I was more curious if there was something new in there than just the usual arguments and counterarguments about ecto and endothermy," Tom admitted. "It kind of seems a centrepiece to the whole debate, but I thought there might be something a little more complex than what you get on the TV specials."

Some sort of fire was lit in Billy. "So, where do you fall in the debate?"

"Ecto or endothermy?" Tom shrugged. "I'm not sure. I mean, as long as they're classified Reptilia, it's a fundamental of the definition, isn't it? Maybe a less well-adapted degree of endothermy with a fair bit of gigantothermy involved on the larger ones. It was outside of an ice age, after all. The earth was warmer overall, so that would have allowed a less complete adaptation than the mammalian one."

He'd never had anyone to talk dinosaurs with. No one who didn't think it was childish and stupid to still be interested once you weren't six anymore. But Billy got the science, talked the jargon and had a thing about ceratopsian dinosaurs that was kind of cool, even if it was unexpected that he'd like a triceratops more than a styracosaur. Billy seemed the type for a more obscure preference.

Billy stayed over with them for dinner, and when Mrs. Lewis said, "Your friend Billy seems like a nice boy," Tom just smiled and nodded. It was strange, but he really thought he might actually _have_ a friend.

It was strange at first. Because Tom had never done well in groups, too used to everyone thinking he wasn't one of 'them', whoever 'them' was at the time. But Billy insisted, and Tom found himself in with the Angel Grove High's paleontology club, arguing about evolution. Billy seemed to make it his mission to introduce Tom around, and he found himself often buried in a crowd of so-called nerds and geeks.

But it was nice there. They indulged his weird interests, and instead of rolling their eyes, he'd find himself with people who'd watch old chop-socky movies with him, interested in the history of the martial arts, if not the practice. These were kids who'd been harassed and bullied like he had, but had chosen to retreat rather than fight back. Once they understood his violent tendencies, he was suddenly always surrounded by a crowd of them, suddenly seen as a protector. It was like being in a completely different reality than the one he was used to, and he owed it all to Billy.

That was why he never questioned the million times Billy would ditch him, his weird watch/pager going off with its little tune. He never complained when Billy would tell him with a regretful smile that it was a sort of traditional bonding night with his friends, Jason, Zack, Kimberly and Trini. He did his best not to antagonise Jason, who Billy assured him was normally a really great guy, and Tom could see that. He tried not to upset Kimberly, which was harder than it looked, because she was one of those really popular girls, and Tom was frankly intimidated by the self-confidence that oozed out of her pores.

But Jason seemed to be holding Tom's early suspensions and warnings against him and Kimberly was apparently frightened of him after he beat up the school's two village idiots in front of her. Zack followed Jason's lead, something Billy told him was usual, and Trini . . .

. . . Billy didn't know why Trini didn't like Tom, either.

Still, Billy was the first real friend Tom had, and he wasn't going to lose him to anything. Not other people, not his own stupidity, not his near-painful jealousy of the closeness Billy had with the others.

And he certainly wasn't going to lose him to the ugly grey things that were the invading aliens the Lewises had warned him about when he first got to Angel Grove.


	3. The Green Ranger

Disclaimer: Good heavens no, I own none of this. I'd be a lot richer if I did.

Notes: Some of you may notice my tendency to miss out on the connective tissue that would make this a proper fic, rather than scattershot scenes. It's a flaw, and one I acknowledge. I also want to make it clear that, people have seen the episodes. For the most part, it should be assumed that the monsters were the same and the interactions were roughly the same in most ways. If more details are wanted, you're going to have to PM me or leave a review asking.

* * *

Not for the first time, Billy cursed his lack of physical prowess and his lack of interest in the martial arts, boxing or any other physical pastime with the express intent of learning the most efficient ways to injure other persons. But this was the first time someone wasn't running away from Rita's putties. Instead, Tom was placing himself between Billy and the putties, determined to protect him. Him. The Blue Power Ranger.

Logically, Billy knew that Tom could not know that Billy didn't need the protection, further, the whole reason he wasn't morphing was in order to keep that a secret from everyone, Tom included, but it galled nonetheless.

It was also terrifying.

They'd been caught in an alley and hemmed in. Tom had had several chances to escape, but he hadn't taken them because Billy hadn't run. And suddenly there had been no way out for either of them. Unless Billy were to morph, which he wasn't supposed to do in front of civilians, but surely Zordon would understand . . .

Tom suddenly lunged toward the rusty fire escape, somehow wrenching loose a length of steel from the stairway (a clear violation of fire safety regulations some small portion of Billy's distracted mind noted) and began to use it as a weapon, laying into the putties. It was something Billy had neither seen nor imagined.

When he and the others had first faced the putties, they'd all been outmatched, even Jason. They had learned that putties weren't human and didn't react the way humans did. They'd learned a new way to fight that was brutal and assumed the thing you were hitting didn't feel pain the way a person did. But Tom, it seemed, had already figured out that lesson. But it was more than that. There was something fierce and protective in the way he moved, something that the part of Billy that was Blue and Triceratops saw as protection and friend.

It wasn't the clean purity of Jason's karate, but it was smooth and easy, as though Tom were built for this, built for violence. Not in a way that was to harm, but to protect. In those movements he could see an instinctive distillation of those principles of movement Jason tried to teach, the ones you saw in a Bruce Lee movie or the martial arts display at the youth centre the previous week. It was the same determination that made the Power Rangers get back up again when they were flattened by a monster, and Tom _was_ knocked down, again and again, but never backed down, never let up until every last putty was shattered and beaten.

He turned to Billy, looking a little stunned, a little amazed and a little elated, saying, "Man. That was weird. What do you suppose they wanted?"

"I have no hypotheses," Billy lied. Then Tom staggered, slamming into the alley wall. "Tom!" Billy stifled the urge once more to call for a teleport out and looped Tom's arm around his shoulders, helping him to the youth centre.

As they entered the central meeting area of the centre, Zack was next to them at once. "What happened?" he asked, then didn't wait for a reply as he shouted to Ernie, "Ernie! The first aid kit! And I think some ice!"

He took Tom's other side. Billy found himself beginning to shake in reaction. "He fought off an entire putty patrol," he told Zack.

"Seriously, man?" Zack sounded impressed. They got Tom onto a chair in the centre and Zack started to apply ice and bandages to Tom's various abrasions and injuries.

"You're the best friend I've ever had, Billy," Tom said. "You're not much of a fighter, I wasn't going to let them hurt you." he sounded a bit dazed as he spoke. "First _real_ friend I've ever had," he added. Then he blinked hard a few times. "I've got a headache," he said plaintively.

"I think he's got a concussion," Zack said wisely. "We'd better call his parents."

Billy called the Lewis household and soon enough the kind Mrs. Lewis was there, collecting Tom and taking him off to the emergency room. When Tom was finally out of the way, Billy found himself shaking in an unpopulated corner of the youth centre. "Billy? You okay?" Kimberly's voice cut through his brown study and he looked up to see his friends, his fellow Power Rangers, gazing at him in concern. "Zack told us what happened."

"Yeah, Tom nearly got the both of you killed trying to show off," Jason said.

There was an odd ripple Billy felt. Seeing the others shudder, he was pretty sure they all felt it, a flash of something that felt like Green and fear, then something a little slimy and corrupting. "We'd better talk to Zordon," Jason said.

Zordon couldn't explain what they'd felt, save that something had changed in the Morphing Grid, and Billy was unable to confront Jason about his mischaracterisation of Tom's motivations.

The next day he was unable to do so, as something new and terrifying struck from Rita's moon base. It was a Power Ranger, but this one worked for the Empress of Evil. He was Green to their respective colours, and he tore through them like a laser through tissue. Savage and brutal, it was the initial fight with the putties all over again. All Trini and Jason's skill availed them nothing, Zack's deliberately unconventional movements and Kimberly's agility could do nothing to stand in his way.

It only got worse when Billy arrived at Tom's, wanting to see how he was, and was firmly rebuffed. Tom's actions seemed to belie his concussed statement of friendship for Billy, who was left confused and hurt by the green-clad youth's actions.

Tom had become a very close friend in the short time they'd known each other and Billy often wondered what had caused his new friend to think so poorly of his intellect. With a sincere interest in paleontological study, Tom was an excellent and interesting conversationalist on topics of the Order _Dinosauria_, on anatomy and animal behaviour and even on the history of scientific discovery itself. If he was a little more focussed on the one area than was Billy's wont, there was nothing wrong with a considered specialisation, and Tom seemed like an individual who would succeed in his university studies with his interest and dedication to his chosen area of concentration.

Furthermore, outside his interest in paleontology Tom was interested in the martial arts. It was a clearly deep and abiding interest, one supplemented by a sort of instinctive understanding of the forms and appreciation for the art and history of them, as well as the destructive and injurious nature of them. Many times he had found Tom watching news footage of the Power Rangers, deconstructing their fighting techniques and tactics in ways Billy found helpful when he was facing down monsters. In fact, upon seeing Billy's frequent victimisation at the hands of school bullies, Tom had insisted on taking Billy aside and teaching him some incredibly vicious fighting techniques that did not come to him with the flashier movements of the power-coin-generated skills, but from Tom's skills at pugilism.

But that was where things became odd. Because Tom was utterly convinced of his own, for lack of a better term, stupidity. He had somehow truly come to believe that he was of lesser intellect than most, consequently believing that schoolwork or other achievements of similar types were not worth the time spent on them because he would supposedly never succeed.

Tom continued to brush him off at school, and Billy decided that, as soon as the crisis with the Green ranger was resolved, once Zordon was safely returned to contact with them, he would take the time to determine what had gone wrong between himself and Tom. When he spotted Tom calmly ignoring a situation that would have previously sent him into a protective rage, he altered his assessment to something gone terribly awry with Tom alone.

Everything changed when the Green Ranger attacked the city again. They were faced with his terrifying and deadly skills for another time, and Billy, desperate, reached for those lessons he'd had from Tom.

"_When in doubt, reach for something to even the score. Find a weapon. If they're beating you ten to one, then it's not a fair fight and you need to make it that way."_

_Tom's hands adjusted Billy's around the branch he was using to demonstrate, shifting them into a position that felt wrong at first, but that soon proved to offer an excellent angle of grasp for use both offensively and defensively. Every movement Tom showed him was explained as he went._

"_People tend to try to hit for the head first, most of the time from the side, coming up this way," Tom explained, his right arm moving slowly to suit. Billy moved to block in the way that Jason had demonstrated in karate class, but Tom stopped him and took his arm in his hands to move his arm differently. "That's a good block for a straight punch like so," he snapped out a blow in perfect form that never connected with Billy, but did come within a few inches of striking him. "The problem is, most people don't do karate. If you were better at it you'd have the training to see and block, but you don't. And in terms of being able to defend now," Tom told him earnestly, "You need to anticipate what those people will do."_

The lessons had been as careful as Jason's. But where Billy couldn't quite seem to translate those lessons to practicality normally, morphed was another story. They were leaping in, one at a time, each one trying and failing to get a grasp on the Green Ranger's style. But as they went in a second time, Billy shifted his grip on his Power Lance. This time, he tried Tom's tactics, tried the duck and twist Tom had shown him before, the upswing of his polearm, done to imitate what he'd been trying with a tree branch.

He hit the Green Ranger hard, sending him back a few paces. "Blue's looking to play, huh?" The smirk behind the helmet was almost audible. The blows they exchanged bore no resemblance to the fancy technical artistry Green had been trading with Jason. These were mean and sharp and . . . familiar?

"_If you get hit, try moving with the attack, don't try to take it head on. Roll and it minimises the damage, and it gives you a little more time to regroup."_

"Tom?" Billy gasped as the suddenly familiar movements crystallised.

A low, painfully familiar chuckle emerged from their opponent. "Took you long enough," he said.

"But . . ." There was only one logical explanation, Billy thought. "Tom, Rita has you under an enchantment," he said. "This is not . . . this isn't you!" Brevity was, perhaps, more important than accuracy in detailing the failures of the new personality in relation to the old.

A chilling laugh emerged from behind the helmet. It was nothing like the laugh Billy had heard when Tom was truly amused. "Why would you say that? I'm sure your little friends wouldn't."

"They have notç had sufficient interactions with you to make a valid determination of your general behavioural tendencies as I have," Billy sallied. "I know you-"

A snort. "You mean when I play nice with your little geek friends, pretend to be another geek and be a walking bully defense," Tom retorted. "That's the 'real' me, huh?"

"More based in reality than this!" Billy said. He knew he sounded pleading, knew his friends were regrouping and was terrified that they would take Tom at his word, that they'd find a way to ambush and destroy the first person since Trini to really listen to what Billy said and try to understand. They thought he was violent and hateful and Billy might be the only one who could stop them from doing something irreparable. "You defend people. You protect our fellow students from bullies, prevent them from being victims of assault. You stand in between attackers and victims, Tom."

"Maybe I'm just sick of protecting people who won't get up and help themselves," Tom replied. There was a snarl in his voice, and then the conversation was over. The fight was on again, and this time Green didn't hold back as he tried to destroy the Rangers. He left when they were all beaten to the ground, laughing as Rita's teleportation picked him up, snatching him away, making it clear she was just toying with them.

Back at the commend centre, Billy ignored the others in favour of diverting some of the sensory resources to arranging to track Tom. Then he couldn't ignore them anymore.

"Ai-ai-ai-ai-ai! Billy, what are you looking for?" Alpha asked.

"So, your new best friend's working for Rita," Jason said.

"It's not his fault," Billy ground out in response. "Whatever enchantment she has him under is creating a highly negative variant on the natural state of his personal predilections."

Trini cut in before anyone could even think to ask. "The spell's making him act differently, he's not himself, and in a bad way." She looked at Billy doubtfully. "Are you sure? Because all those people he beat up-"

Zack. Wonderful, loyal, unprejudiced Zack, spoke. "I saw him after he protected Billy from those putties," he said. "If Billy thinks this is a spell, I believe him." He shot Jason and Trini a Look. "You guys should too. How often is Billy wrong?"

Turning to Alpha, Billy explained, "Acting as Rita's evil Green Ranger is out of character for Tom. I am searching for indicators of dark energy around Tom. I believe he must be under some sort of negative influence from Rita in order to convince him to act in such a way."

"And if he's not acting under Rita's influence?" Jason demanded.

Billy felt his jaw set mulishly. "He is." He still could have offered highly vocal applause as the computer of the Command Centre beeped and printed out the results. Thrusting the information at Jason, Billy felt a sense of vindication as he repeated. "He _is_."

"Then we have to break the spell," Zack said. Jason, Trini and Kimberly were all silent. "Look, I know he doesn't seem like the nicest guy-"

A noise erupted out of Billy's throat before he could stop himself. Wordless, protesting and strange, it halted the others a moment. "Go on, Zack," Billy choked out as he thought of the young man who was so concerned about hurting the feelings of others that he'd gone on a date with a girl just because he didn't know how to tell her he wasn't interested in her that way and had to be rescued from a date at the Butterfly Garden by her friends because he was too nice to say he didn't think butterflies were interesting.

"The point is," Zack finished, "He's willing to stand in between people and danger, he's a good friend of Billy's and that alone should mean we wouldn't leave him with Rita."

"How did you know it was him?" Kimberly asked. "I mean, you started fighting him, and all of a sudden you knew. How?"

Taking a deep breath, Billy said, "Tom was worried about me and he tried to give me instruction on an informal fighting technique that he thought would be beneficial in terms of defense against opponents with less formal technical martial skill."

"What?" Trini asked, sounding appalled. "He thinks he's better than Jason?"

"No," Billy corrected tiredly. "He thought that most people who commit assaults are not trained in a formal technique like karate, and given that those who are less well-trained do not have the skill to anticipate the movements of such persons and it would behoove me to understand better how to deal with such attackers given my unfortunate lack of talent in martial skills."

"So he _does_ think he's better than Jason," Trini said.

Billy turned to her, hurt. "You are not listening," he accused her.

"Stop!" Jason interposed himself between them. "Look. I don't want to hurt anyone and having another ranger on our side can only be a good thing. If Billy's right it's better that we break the spell. We can figure out if Tom is good or bad or whatever he may be later. Let's focus on what we need to do."

It didn't escape Billy's notice that Jason didn't seem to think Tom was any good either.

* * *

Pacing around his room, Tom snarled to himself. How dare Billy stand there trying to tell him who he was? What did the Blue Ranger know about Tom's life? How could he make any judgments about who Tom was or wasn't? He'd just been running around, forcing Tom into some geeky mould.

_You liked it._ A small voice spoke in the back of his head. _You liked friends and the lack of fear and the way that people didn't look at you like a freak or a failure_.

He shook his head, trying to make that voice go away. It was weakness. It was pathetic. He didn't need friends and kindness. He needed respect and to make people fear him.

_Billy respects you_.

Incensed, he ignored what Rita had told him about keeping a low profile. He needed to _do_ something. Needed to get out there, feel that power that could only come from seeing someone cowering at his feet. Maybe he'd kill Bulk and Skull. The two seemed not only incapable of _not_ bullying others, they were really irritating. Playing with them might be fun.

Morphed and grinning behind his helmet, Tom laughingly began to toy with the pair, batting them down every time they tried to run, making them feel helpless and beleaguered.

"What are you doing?" demanded Goldar. "The Empress said you were to wait until you were called!"

"Playing," Tom answered. "It's just a little fun, monkey man, lighten up."

They were interrupted. "Well, we're here to put a stop to that kind of fun," said Jason from behind his Red façade.

A snarl stretched over Tom's lips as he launched himself at Red. He wanted to get that smug, self-righteous look off the other boy's face. He wanted to stop the little quips that stung so much about how Jason just 'knew' Tom was using what he'd learnt in class to hurt other people, that _Tom_ was the bully, that Tom didn't deserve to be there and it was only Jason's 'fairness' that let him be in the class at all. That Jason was lowering his own standards to teach Tom karate. The little corrections that didn't seem so bad until they added up and just kept picking and picking and picking.

Because Jason knew karate, but Tom knew how to _fight._ Knew what you did to take an opponent down and keep him that way. Knew how to be brutal and fast and forget about the hurricane kicks when a length of lead pipe could do all that and more.

Every hit that cut through Jason's defense felt like a small victory and every hit he took just goaded Tom on more to win this fight and see Red lying broken at his feet.

He was aware of the others taking on Goldar, but his world had narrowed to the focus of his red haze of anger. He was jarred from his concentration by the blue between him and Red. Billy.

Billy was there, all that flashy flippy stuff gone in favour of Tom's own style. Something that came from a more visceral place than all that artistry Jason practiced. As Blue matched him blow for blow, Tom felt a flash of pride in the teen for picking up the style, even just as a ranger. A thought of how cool it would be to get Billy in on one of the cage matches Tom had won by the skin of his teeth while fleeing cross-country from the New York state foster system crossed his mind.

A particularly brutal hit drove Billy back and gave Tom the chance to shake his head, trying to jar those images loose. Get his focus back.

Goldar had contemptuously taken on the others, a flock of putties now in the mix. When had they arrived? He didn't know. The others were now distracted, keeping the grey foot soldiers from hurting civilians. One putty lunged for a small child, crossing Tom's path back to his fight with Billy. He kicked it away, sending it to shatter against a nearby wall, telling himself it was just because it was in his way as the fight picked up again.

"Break the spell, Tom," Billy pleaded as they locked weapons again. "You're better than this. You protect people. Like that little boy, like you tried with Kimberly when you first got to school."

"The pretty princess doesn't need any protection," Tom sneered. "I'm sure she's got a dozen football players happy to dance to her tune."

"Then what about Laurie?" Billy gasped out, the Dragon Dagger scraping along his suit, no doubt leaving pain in its wake. "You didn't need to agree to go to her cousin's wedding. You're just doing it so that her parents won't keep trying to convince her that her sexual orientation is not what it is."

An internal wince at the nice girl whose parents' continued harassment on the topic of her girlfriend was driving her to distraction gave him a delightfully nasty thought. "Maybe I'll swing by their home," he mused. "Could be a nice present."

"You can't help yourself," Billy told him. "Can you? You're still protecting people."

He wasn't. He wasn't, he couldn't, he was evil, he was a ne'er-do-well that would chase and taunt and hurt others because it gave him a laugh. Because . . .

Tom turned to a whirlwind of fury as he slammed fists and feet and dagger into the Blue Ranger to take out of his hide the anger her felt over the implications he was a good person. He wasn't.

"Billy! No!" shouted Yellow behind him. Blue was on the ground, clawing at the dirt in pain, clinging to consciousness and his morph.

And Tom couldn't do it. Because it was _Billy_. It was the first person who ever thought Tom was worth anything since his dimly remembered parents had died eight years before. Who'd gotten Tom's grades up and reduced his rates of suspensions and . . .

"Good work, Green Ranger," said Goldar. The golden monkey's sword was raised high, set to come down on the Blue Ranger's head. Set to kill him.

The spell shattered. Tom's morph was broken by the shock, but Billy was more important. The blue polearm on the ground, the Blue Power Lance, came to his hand and Tom drove it at Goldar, striking the monkey hard. The weapon vanished, evaporating as its bearer was just barely awake and had not given permission to pass the weapon to another.

It was enough to get the gold-plated monster away from Billy, buying time for the rangers to rally around their fallen comrade. "I knew recruiting a human was a mistake!" Goldar snarled.

Tom reached for the morpher, already raising the power to change back when Rita's prize minion fled with the putties.

A wave of sick self-hatred filled him. What had he done? He really was no better than anyone had said. He'd failed Billy, failed to manage even his self-appointed task of protecting people, becoming exactly what he'd always tried to beat into submission.

He turned to the Power Rangers. It wasn't adequate, but it was all he had. "I'm sorry," he told them. Tossing Jason the Green morpher, he turned and walked away. They took Billy with them and Tom went back to the Lewises, thanked his lucky stars they weren't home and threw up what felt like everything he'd ever eaten.

At school he did his best to avoid everyone he'd been horrible to, figuring that if he let hurt feelings ease he could get through however long it took him to get expelled again with minimal trouble. It was actually a lot of work to avoid Billy, though. Even though they pretty much only had homeroom together, Billy being in all AP classes and Tom . . . well . . . not, the Blue Ranger seemed to be everywhere. It got so bad that Tom skipped school one Wednesday, hiding out at the mall.

Turning a corner as he bypassed crowds by ducking out into the parking lot to circle around outside, Tom was momentarily alone, then suddenly found himself hurtling through space in a teleportation beam, landing in the unfortunately familiar setting of the Power Rangers' command centre.

"Welcome, Tom Oliver," came the deep, sonorous voice of the Rangers' mentor, Zordon.

Taking a deep breath, Tom turned to look at the Eltarian. "I'm sorry," he told Zordon. "I know it doesn't make up for it, but I'm sorry that I . . ." he trailed off, gesturing at the computers and panels he'd wrecked on Rita's orders, at Alpha 5 whose programming he'd messed with and at the alien man whose very existence in their dimension had been threatened by his actions.

"You are not at fault for the actions you committed while under Rita's sway," Zordon said. "You are now, however, the master of your own actions. Because of this I must ask you, why have you turned away from the Power?"

"Turned away?" Tom asked. "I wasn't supposed to be a Power Ranger to begin with. I'm not brave or smart or a team player or anything that would make a good Power Ranger."

"I would debate the matter of your courage," Zordon told him, "but I would add that you are a strong and resourceful fighter. The Rangers have need of such."

Tom snorted. "So I can break heads. You can find anyone around who can break heads."

"None have been accepted by the Power," Zordon said.

That was sheer foolishness. "Accepted? Please. I don't know anything about magic and even I can tell that Rita did something to me. She _made_ me into an acceptable vessel. I should never have been a ranger-"

Zordon interrupted him. "You should not have been the _Green_ Ranger, Tom," he said gravely. "Each ranger colour goes to a particular person. Red is the leader, you know this. The rest of the team exists in a balance of the personalities that go with the colours of that team. Yellow is calm and logic in the face of crisis while Blue is intelligence, whether scientific as Billy is or tactical as others have been. Black, Green, Pink, White, these other colours vary as to the people who are needed to balance the Red, Yellow and Blue that are the core of the team."

"Which has what to do with me?" Tom asked.

"You are not Green, Tom," Zordon said, as though it were an explanation. "Your colour, I would not wish to prejudice you at this time, but this is not your colour, and it does you a disservice to use a power coin that is not such, just as much as it would do a disservice to put Zack in Blue or Jason in Yellow."

That was a very nice explanation, but, "What does that have to do with me?" Tom asked. "I can't make up for what I did and I see no reason to pretend that I can. I'm not the Green Ranger and I don't intend to be."

"You are being a coward," Zordon said. If he'd meant to goad Tom, it failed.

"Tell me something about myself I don't know," Tom told him.

Zordon looked at him silently a moment, then said, "Perhaps I am too used to those who have come to the Power honestly," he admitted. "But allow me to give you a different perspective than the one you are looking from. Observe the viewing Globe."

Obediently, because really, listening to the man was the least he could do after the crap he'd pulled, Tom looked at the Globe. As he watched, horrible monsters appeared on the surface. Ones that were terrible and made the things the Rangers had so far fought look like kittens. "What?" he asked, not sure what he was even asking.

"Rita has not exerted herself to destroy the Rangers as she might have," Zordon told him. "And with each attack she brings to bear greater and newer powers." New images began to flicker through the globe, this time of power rangers. As Tom watched, he had a strange sensation that there was something . . . off about some. "A Power Ranger team is comprised of five. As I have already said, Red, Yellow and Blue form the core, with two other colours that complement them."

"And by colours, you mean personalities," Tom said slowly. "But where does the Green Ranger fit into all this?"

"The fifth colour could have been Green and not Black, or Pink," Zordon explained. "But there is another coin, because it is rare there is not a Sixth Ranger." That sounded like it meant something. Like Sixth was some sort of official designation. Zordon continued. "A Sixth Ranger exists outside the team. He or she is there to strengthen the team. To assist. The mission of such a Ranger is rarely the same as the others', although it may meld well with the mission of the main team." He looked soberly at Tom. "They are not part of the team, being separate, but they assist when the others are overcome."

"You want me to take this coin that shouldn't even be mine and play backup," Tom said slowly. "You'd only call me in when they needed help."

Zordon nodded. "I ask because I have watched you. You would not wish to allow Billy to be hurt," he went on. "You would regret the choice to give up the coin should it happen."

Something needed to be clarified, however. "Jason wouldn't be in charge of me, though?" Tom asked. "It's just . . . he doesn't like me, Kimberly and Trini don't either. We wouldn't be a team and we wouldn't work as one, not really."

"I could wish it were so," Zordon said. "But I fear it is true. Therefore I ask you, Tom Oliver, will you take up the Green Power Coin?"

It was the thought of Billy that decided him. He didn't think he could ever be able to deal with Jason, his own resentment at being judged before the other teenager even had a chance to know him preventing any sort of real trust, but to protect Billy, to protect Billy's friends that meant so much to the Blue Ranger? "I'll do it."

As he swore the threefold rules of secrecy, nonescalation and never misusing his powers for gain, Tom felt that slightly off-kilter power wash over him again the way it had when Rita had handed him the coin, and promised himself he'd do better this time.


	4. Friends

Disclaimer: Good heavens no, I own none of this. I'd be a lot richer if I did.

Notes: You may have noticed I have Tom being a tad obsessed with dinosaurs. The man became a paleontologist by the time we reach Dino Thunder. I can't imagine that he wouldn't have been interested in them before. I now subside to quiet muttering about how a brachiosaur is one of the least cool choices for a superhero totem animal, and why didn't he just choose a duckbill if he was going to that uncool? Seriously, people. A mosasaur would be way cooler. Biting swimmy death that puts Jaws to shame. Someone needs to get on that.

* * *

The first time Tom came out of nowhere with the Dragonzord, saving them all from the monster of the week, Jason had led them all to ask Zordon why he hadn't warned them Tom had stolen the coin back. Billy had felt a little smug when Zordon had made it clear he'd talked Tom into taking the coin, not that Tom had changed his mind and just stolen it.

The second time Tom came to their rescue Billy had tried to catch him, ask him why he was still avoiding them, himself in particular. Tom had simply fled the scene, just as he had every time Billy had tried to catch him in and out and after classes at school.

The third time Tom came with the Dragon Dagger and his deadly brand of skill, protecting them all from Rita's monsters, stepping in front of hits that would have flattened one or another of them as though it was his duty to do so, Billy stopped by Tom's home with the Lewises. They said he was suffering from influenza, and Billy was forced to leave.

By the fourth time, he knew he would have to do more to catch his friend. He missed Tom. He missed his friend's wry sense of humour and his chivalric worldview that he camouflaged as a vendetta. But Tom had chosen to go out of his way to avoid being located. It took some research for Billy to discover Tom's illicit borrowing of the Lewis family vehicle. Collecting some cash from his savings, Billy purchased a ticket out to the nearby town of Stone Canyon and tracked down the automobile to a parking lot next to a dojo that taught ninjutsu.

"Excuse me," he asked one of three youths chatting in the foyer, "Have you seen a . . ." he paused a moment, then decided now was the time to test out his new interlocutory style. "A boy about my age, long hair, Native American descent?" If he had tried this with his usual friends, they might have been unduly suspicious of his motivations, no matter that they were simple. The use of a less abstruse vocabulary would serve him well in general interpersonal relationships and he might as well practise where such activity would not be seen as unusual.

"Are you looking for Tom?" asked the third of the trio, an aesthetically pleasing young black woman.

Breathing a sigh of relief that this might be that easy, Billy said, "Aff – yes. We had a . . . misunderstanding. I need to correct his misapprehensions on the matter."

"What would that be?" Tom's voice said from behind him. "I hurt-"

"You weren't yourself," Billy cut him off. "What Rita did to you was no one's fault but hers."

Tom's eyes glittered with something, anger at himself, perhaps. "You can't say that I didn't-"

"I can and do." Billy abruptly realised that their exchange may have been a little more noteworthy than he'd intended. "You've heard about the attacks on Angel Grove?" he asked the three.

The Asian boy nodded. "We'd heard. Something about some alien who calls herself Rita Repulsa?" his voice stopped on a questioning note.

"Tom was captured by her and brainwashed-"

"I could have fucking killed you!" Tom sounded desperate. "I nearly . . . Kimberly was . . ." his voice cracked and he lunged for the door.

It burst out of Billy in a way he was sure would have shocked his best friends of longstanding. "It wasn't your goddamned fault!"

The two young men had grabbed Tom. "I don't think your friends hate you as much as you claim," said the white boy. "Hi," he added to Billy. "I'm Rocky, this is Aisha and Adam." He turned to Tom again. "And we're going to pin you until you let him finish."

Tom looked desperate. "I don't deserve-"

Billy cut him off. "What exactly is it that makes you such a reprehensible individual, Tom? The way that you have chosen to improve your linguistic capabilities in order to understand my tendency to inappropriate verbiage? Your poor history with both school and government authorities which has had a negative impact on your acquisition of standardised education? Your tendencies to vigilantism in school in defense of those who cannot protect themselves from assault and battery? The selfless way you interceded on my behalf when we were attacked by putties in front of the youth centre? Which of these things is such a negative reflection on your character, Tom?"

"Negative impact on my acquisition of standardised education?" Tom snorted. "Please. I'm not that-"

"If you try to indicate a lack of intellect on your part I will have to solicit psychological assistance for you," Billy told him snappishly.

"Did you understand any of that?" Aisha muttered to Rocky.

"I think Tom did, then he started to call himself stupid," Adam muttered back.

"Whoa." Rocky stepped in between them, hands raised. "Okay, first, I didn't get most of that, so I'm probably going to say something dumb, but that last bit, Tom? If you understood all that, you're really _not_ stupid, okay?"

Billy pressed his advantage. "Lack of educational opportunity is not the same as lack of intellect, Tom. You . . . your schooling," he hastily corrected, knowing that Tom hated to be seen as a victim of any kind, "Has been inadequate due to the disjointed natures of the many curricula you have participated in over the course of your educational career."

"Disjointed natures of the many curricula?" Adam inquired.

Tom shrugged. "I've been to a lot of different schools. While there are state-mandated requirements of schools in terms of what they teach, they all teach it at different rates and in different orders. When you switch schools, sometimes you miss things."

"And when you switch schools up to three times a year on average and miss the bulk of the most recent year, you lack the wherewithal to avail yourself of an education," Billy pointed out.

The three, whom Billy now considered excellent accomplices in his quest to convince Tom they should continue their friendship, stared. Rocky said, "Man, how are you even passing?"

"That's not really important," Tom said, grimacing. "The point is, I did some horrible things to you-"

"Under the effect of brainwashing, if – I'm sorry," Aisha turned to Billy. "I didn't ask your name."

He smiled. "Billy. Billy Cranston," he told her.

"Right." She nodded and turned back to Tom. "So, like I was saying, you'd been brainwashed. Explain how things you do when you've been hypnotised, or whatever, are your fault." She turned expectant eyes on Tom.

"I was planning to rape Kimberly," he said, sounding as though he wanted them to hate him.

Billy blinked and thought of the taunts the evil Green Ranger had levelled at the Pink. "Oh."

"Yes," Tom said, setting his jaw stubbornly.

"But you didn't," Billy pointed out. "I mean, it hardly would have been a challenge for you to have succeeded at that ambition should you have chosen to do so seriously."

"Face it, Tom," Rocky said. "You're just not a bad person."

Tom wrenched himself away, only to come face to face with Adam. "Get out of my way," he snapped, clearly trying to flee the situation. He took a swing at the Asian boy who blocked the shot with ease and ducked under and wove around Tom's erratic movements to pin him.

For a moment, Billy's heart was in his throat, because he'd seen what Tom could do when cornered. "Don't worry," Aisha murmured. "Adam's the best of us."

"You haven't seen Tom really angry," Billy started.

Rocky shook his head. "Look at him. Really look. He's not really trying. He wants to be stopped."

And Billy looked. Looked with Blue eyes and not Billy ones, looked as someone who'd learned Tom's tricks on getting out of trouble with attackers, and saw they were right. Then he went to where Tom was feebly struggling against Adam's hold. "Tom. I'm still your friend. I won't stop because of what happened."

"And when Jason tells you again how I'm not worth his time? When Kimberly points out how scared she is of me and Trini tells everyone that violence doesn't solve anything?" Tom looked at him entreatingly. "They're your friends, they're your," he stopped, because there were things that could not be said in front of these three, "They're more important than I am," he finished a little lamely.

But Billy knew what he was saying and what he meant. "Zack believes you're worth it," he said. "And while you and Jason have begun your relationship in unfortunate circumstances, he is fundamentally fair or he would not have taught you as he did before we knew your motivations."

"And Trini?" Tom said dryly. "I know I scare Kimberly, which is only fair, because she terrifies me. But I don't know what I've done or not to Trini."

"I don't know," Billy told him. "Trini's treatment of you is not a mystery I have yet parsed. Once I do I will let you know." Then he paused as new information reached him. "Kimberly frightens you? Why?"

"She's a cheerleader," Tom said dismally.

"That is hardly . . . you bear her a somewhat romantic affection!" he accused, suddenly seeing it. His eyes went wide. "You want-"

"I don't!" Tom denied.

Aisha smiled. "I don't even know this Kimberly girl, and boy, you so are crushing on her."

Tom looked Billy in the eye for a long moment, and whatever it was he found, he suddenly relaxed and Adam let him go. "So, you came all the way out here after me?"

"Well, you kept running away," Billy pointed out. "If I wished to . . . if I wanted to talk to you, I had to . . . chase after." He looked around. "I'm surprised. Ninjutsu? I would have thought you'd want to continue focussing on karate?"

"I did a lot of different styles of martial arts over the years. I tended to make at least orange belt equivalents in most." Tom shrugged. "Early belts aren't that hard. Memorising set katas and things like that are the kinds of tests most styles use for the early couple levels." He sighed. "I like karate best, but I'd had more luck catching ninjutsu classes than karate, frankly."

The three nodded. "I _was_ a little confused," Adam admitted, "when I asked and he said he'd taken classes for years, but if you watch him, the styles tend to merge. You find a bit of Kung Fu here and Jujitsu there. I asked, and now the big thing I know to watch for is when he backslides into the wrong technique."

"From your lips to Jason's ears," Billy said wryly, then sighed.

Tom eyed him shrewdly. "Still having trouble with what Jason's teaching?" he asked.

Flushing, Billy looked away, a little embarrassed. Why was it so easy for him to build a flying VW Beetle, but he couldn't manage a simple white belt kata? Aisha seemed to somehow read his mind. "Different people have different talents," she said with a soothing smile that reminded Billy of Trini. "Just because you're not Bruce Lee doesn't make your own skills worthless."

"It's just . . . Jason's an excellent teacher, and yet I can't seem to connect with his methods," Billy said in frustration. "And the only skills I seem to have picked up are the few you taught me, Tom."

"What you taught him?" Adam asked Tom, looking surprised.

Flushing, Tom said, "It's not anything formal. Just a few tips and hints about bare knuckle brawling." He dismissed the effectiveness of his hybrid style with a wave of a hand.

Rocky had an arrested look on his face, and said suddenly to Billy, "Think fast." Then one of his feet was lashing out towards Billy's head. Reflexes he wasn't even aware he had sent him moving with the direction of the kick, rolling out of the way and snatching one of a group of staffs leaning against the wall, swinging it at Rocky's still-planted foot.

Scrambling to his feet, he saw that Rocky had avoided the wild swing and was in a non-defensive standing position, watching Billy critically. "Not bad on the reflexes, the staff was a surprise."

"I told him that, unless and until he's got better hand to hand skills, better to get a weapon. It's not escalation in his case, because he doesn't have the skills to go toe to toe without the help, which means this just evens up the playing field." Tom smiled. "That really wasn't bad," he told Billy. "I told you rolling with the attack's the way to go when it's that sudden."

Nodding along with what Tom was saying, Rocky said, "You know, you're the smart type. You don't do all that well with just memorising things. You need to understand why you're doing things or else you just can't bring yourself to bother applying your intellect to memorising the actions." He was circling Billy in a movement that put him in mind of a shark. "You're not going to learn well when it's just memorised choreography. That's why Tom's teaching worked for you. He was able to put everything into concrete cause and effect terms in a way that, 'This repeated movement will train you until the motion of the block is reflexive,' really won't do."

Billy's objections were effectively bulldozed by the trio, which was how he found himself getting instruction from Aisha and Rocky in ninjutsu. Rocky had been right, it turned out. For all that Billy was used to turning even the most lackadaisical educator into a source of information, when it came to physical disciplines he was not naturally so inclined and required a specific type of instruction. In some ways, he found, it was the precise inverse of Tom's skill sets. Tom could turn even the worst instruction in a physical discipline into useful information, but required a specific teaching style in order to gain the full value of academic instruction.

Soon, he was spending much of his time on a commute to Stone Canyon, dropping Jason's classes in favour of a style of instruction in martial arts that did far better for him.

He'd had to drop some of his regular extracurricular obligations, but in the end found that his scientific work with the zords and the computer systems of the Command Centre were far more rewarding than the school's computer club and various science fairs. And all this freed up his time to accompany Tom to classes in Stone Canyon.

They were heading for the RADBUG, because Billy refused to let Tom illegally drive a car back and forth between the two towns, whereas if they took the bug, at least they wouldn't get arrested. When they got there, Zack was leaning against the car. "So, where you guys been going?" he asked. "We're all sort of curious and Jason's been wondering about you ditching his classes," he said to Billy with a somewhat severe look. It was out of place on the usually smiling and cheerful face. "You know that you need the work."

Sensing Tom about to bristle on his behalf, Billy laid a hand on Tom's arm. "It's okay, Tom. I didn't tell them, so they don't know. They're right to worry. You can come along if you'd like," he offered. He shot Tom a dark look when the other tensed. Tom tended to be a little possessive out of nervousness that he'd lose his friends to others. He watched as Tom very deliberately relaxed, even letting Zack sit in the front passenger seat as they flew out to Stone Canyon.

He followed them into the dojo, a sudden grin lighting his face as he saw Billy greet Rocky, then Aisha. Billy wasn't quite sure of why he flushed so much when she smiled at him, but he liked talking with her. She was soothing to speak with the same way Trini was, but there was something different about – "Oh, I see," Zack said. "_This_ is why you're coming out here to take classes."

Billy frowned in confusion, then saw Tom look speculatively at Zack. "I didn't want to say anything," Tom said to Zack, slowly starting to smile. "I mean, Aisha's two best friends say they see her as their sister," he nodded at Rocky and Adam on the other side of the room.

Zack was nodding sagely. "Right. Like if someone were to try dating Kim or Trini," he said. "Jase and I would be morally obliged to talk to them."

"What are you both talking about?" Billy demanded.

"Nothing," they chorused. "You need any advice about putting the moves on her?" Zack asked with a grin.

Tom snorted. "You mean like you do with Angela?" he asked.

That was funny and Billy couldn't keep from snickering.

"Hey!" Zack shot Tom an affronted look. "She'll fall for my charms, you wait and see."

"It was all over school, man," Tom told him, shaking his head. "She said she wouldn't date you even if you were a Power Ranger. Not even if you were her favourite ranger." He turned to Billy. "I heard her favourite was the Blue Ranger."

That was too much for Zack, who launched himself at Tom the way he would have Jason, roughhousing. "Don't worry," he called to Tom, hoping a simple verbal reassurance was all that was needed. "He does that with Jason all the time when it is reaffirmed to him that Angela is less than interested in his blandishments."

Billy left them to change, and by the time he came back, what had been roughhousing was now hip-hop aikido sparring with Tom's mixed bag of martial arts styles. Adam and Rocky were watching with sharp eyes. "Who is that?" Rocky muttered.

"My friend Zack," Billy told them. They both started. "It's a fighting style he invented. He calls it hip hop aikido."

"Interesting," murmured Adam, shooting Billy a sharp look.

The spar ended when Aisha waded in and broke it up. Zack, lying on the floor from where she'd dumped him, looked up at her and said, "Take it easy on Billy. He's not all that confident around pretty girls."

She looked at Tom and Zack, then at Billy, then said, "I wanted to see that new Harrison Ford movie," she told him. "It's playing at the theatre on Kensington Avenue at 3:00 on Saturday."

"O – okay," Billy replied hesitantly.

"Okay then," Aisha said, calmly businesslike about the whole thing. "See you at 2:30 then?"

"Sure," Billy said.

And that was that. He had a date with Aisha on Saturday.

* * *

Tom found himself faced with the deeply uncomfortable sense that he'd hurt the Power Rangers' team by his mere presence. Jason, Trini and Kimberly were now openly having regular disagreements with Billy, and after Zack started dropping by on occasion to the dojo where Adam, Rocky and Aisha trained and taught, he was now often at odds with the others as well.

It was after hearing from Rocky that Aisha had complained to Adam that Billy was sweet but didn't know how to dress if it didn't involve overalls, Tom decided to try and bring Kimberly onside. It took a lot of effort to catch Kimberly alone, and wound up involving him spending a whole Saturday at the mall, waiting until Jason fled the torture that was shopping with girls and Trini got tired of helping Kimberly power shop, leaving to do something that didn't involve matching colours.

"Kimberly, hey," he said, incredibly nervous.

She shot him a suspicious look. "Tom? Why are you here?"

"I . . . uh . . . this is going to sound really weird, and Billy's probably going to be angry with me, but Rocky said something about Adam saying that Aisha was getting violent about it and-"

Raising a hand, the Pink Ranger cut him off. "Who? And what does Billy have to do with anything? I mean, with these people I don't know."

"Billy's got a date, a second date, tomorrow," Tom said. "With Aisha. She's one of the people he's been taking ninjutsu classes with."

Kimberly's eyes went wide. "He's got a date and we didn't _know_?"

"I think he's worried that you, Jason or Trini might not say nice things to Aisha. Jason's been a little . . ." he waved a hand, unsure of the right word. "Less than nice about Billy looking for classes somewhere else."

Looking thoughtful now, she nodded. "Okay. So, why are you telling me?"

"Aisha's two best friends, Rocky and Adam, I heard from them that she wasn't all that happy about how Billy was dressed on their first date. I mean, not that she didn't like going out, I can't see her agreeing to a second date if she didn't, but . . ." Tom shrugged.

She blanched. "He wore his overalls on a date, didn't he?"

It was true. "Yeah."

"But you're telling me this?" she was right that it was weird.

Tom took a deep breath. "Look. I get that I scared you that first day in school," he said. "But . . . if I'm going to convince you and Jason and Trini that I'm not a bad person, I have to do that myself. I can't just let Billy and Zack keep on repeating it. I need to prove it." He looked at her earnestly. "But I don't know how to do it except by proving that I'm Billy's friend. That I'm Zack's friend."

"And we're split down the middle right now," Kimberly said, eyeing him. "You're worried about the team too, aren't you?"

"I didn't want to say," Tom admitted. "Because it sounds cold, but-"

"But if we're split the way we are right now, and all over you, it's bad for all of us." Despite her valley girl attitude and appearance, Kimberly was insightful. "Which means we should get to know you," she said. And then the thoughtful appearance vanished. "But first, we need to get to Billy's and figure out what he should be wearing. You said he and this Aisha have a date tomorrow? Do you know where?"

"I think it's the travelling dinosaur exhibit, actually," he said. "They went to the movies the first time, and Aisha thought it was only fair they go where Billy wanted for the second one." He made a face. "Now I don't know who _I'm_ going to go with. I mean, Billy's not going to want to go twice."

"To see the dinosaur exhibit?" Kimberly asked. "You want to go?"

Honesty at this point was probably the best policy. "I like dinosaurs. Billy and I were going to go, and then Aisha asks where for their date and I think Billy panicked. I didn't want to complain then, because really, he's having a bad enough time freaking out about the date, you know?"

"Well," Kimberly looked like she'd made some sort of a decision as she linked her arm through Tom's and said, "Before anything else, I need to rescue Billy from his bad fashion decisions."

Billy was less than enthused when they showed up and positively terrified by Kimberly's single-minded perusal of his wardrobe. Tom tried not to laugh, a decision which stood him in good stead when Kimberly informed him in no uncertain terms that he and she were going on a date to the same place and time as Billy and Aisha, because she had to personally make sure that Billy at least arrived there dressed properly and because she had to vet Billy's date.

"Me? You and me? A date?" Tom was staring at the pretty girl, stunned. Sure, he'd entertained the odd fantasy here and there about what it might be like to get to ask her out and . . . well . . . stuff, but this was real and frankly, she was intimidating.

"Yep," she said. "Now we're going to your place and I'm going to pick something out so that you don't show up in flannel." She said the last word as though it were a four-letter word, and maybe to her it was.

And that was how he found himself back at the mall again, this time with an allowance handed to him by a very amused Mrs. Lewis, shopping for clothes the girl in pink next to him would accept him wearing if he was to be seen in public with her on a date. "Kim, really, we don't have to do this-"

"I have to go to be sure she's good for Billy," Kimberly explained, "Because otherwise I won't get to meet her nearly soon enough. That means I have to go as a double date, because otherwise it's just weird and stalkery."

Tom stared at her over this, 'logic'. "But it's still weird and stalkery," he protested.

"Not if it's a double date," Kimberly told him in no uncertain terms. "And I have to get to know you better, so I'm killing two sales with one credit card."

Was there something wrong with him that he thought her take-charge attitude and weird stalkery tendencies were cute?

And thus it came to pass that they arrived at the exhibit, Billy making a hash, apparently, of explaining that Kimberly was insane. "Hi," Tom said to Aisha, trying to not look like this was nearly as invasive and weird as it was.

"Hi, I'm Kimberly," said the gymnast, who looked incredibly pretty, hot actually, in her pink dress and tennis shoes. "Billy and I have been friends since forever, and when I heard that he was going out on a date that none of us, except Zack, who doesn't count because he only _thinks_ he understands girls, had ever met, I had to come along to meet you. Tom's my date, so we can just double and it doesn't have to be weird."

"It doesn't?" Tom muttered to Billy, who shrugged helplessly.

"It sometimes does not do to inquire too closely into Kimberly's interpretations of societal norms and behaviours," Billy said.

"I'm starting to get that," Tom said.

Aisha's eyes narrowed a moment, then she said, "Where did you get that purse? It's just perfect with your dress and shoes."

And they were off. For the next ten minutes of the 'date', while they stood in line, got into the exhibit and looked at a small herd of protoceratops, the girls chatted about shopping, clothes, movies stars and music. Then suddenly they broke it off and Aisha pulled Billy away, demanding he tell her more about his favourite dinosaurs, and Kim latched onto Tom's arm to go look at the pteranodons. "I like her," she said. "She's not what you'd think of as Billy's type, but I think that might be better for him anyhow."

"So, you're done vetting her and we can go?" Tom asked, a little regretful he wouldn't get to look at the part with the baby diplodocuses.

She blinked at him. "But I thought you wanted to see the exhibit?"

"I did-"

"Then that's what we'll do," she said firmly. "Besides, we're on a date," she told him.

He stared. "I thought that was the, so-it's-not-weird cover?"

As though he was being stupid, she sighed. "It's only not weird if this is an actual date," she said. "If we leave now that I've checked her out, it's not a date."

"You have a very special logic," he told her. "But seriously, you don't have to stick around, and I can make myself scarce. It's not like I _want_ to watch Billy on a date."

When she went still and stepped away from him, the way she moved made him turn and get a good look at her. She looked . . . hurt. "If you don't want . . ." she trailed off.

Tom swallowed sharply. "Kimberly? Okay, just so you know, I'm not going to claim to be better with girls than Billy, but did you want this to be a real date? Because I thought you didn't really, y'know, like me."

Avoiding his eyes by looking very intently at the thin bones that would have once held up delicate flight membranes, Kim said, "I talked to a few people, and Denise said you were nice and Billy was always going on about how you were helping people and you've been helping us so much and I thought you were kinda cute when I first saw you before the whole Bulk and Skull thing with you and them at my locker and stuff and then I felt bad and I didn't know how to take it back and you're kinda scary when you're all confident and stuff and-"

He really couldn't help it when she'd called him scary for being confident, because it was exactly why she scared him. He kissed her.

"Oh," Kimberly said when they pulled apart. She bit her lip a moment, then smiled, putting her arm back through his. "So. Pterodactyls. I was thinking I should know more about them."

So, pterodactyls it was. Then Kim got teary eyed over the little sauropods, because she thought it was sad how they died and tried not to look too bored when he started to geek out over the dinosaur skin fossils. Eventually they caught up to Aisha and Billy. The four of them wound up at the IHOP nearby, mostly because as they were leaving Adam and Rocky showed up, looking vaguely intimidating and like they were planning to see if Billy had done anything to the 'sisterly' member of their trio.

Kim was deeply sympathetic to Aisha's complaints about overprotective brotherly boys, launching into some terrifying stories about what Jason and Zack had gotten up to over some of her dates. While they waited on pancakes, Tom asked Billy quietly, "Tell me she's exaggerating something, because otherwise I'm seriously thinking of moving to another continent to avoid Jason when this is done."

"I have never participated in these supposedly ubiquitous actions," Billy told him.

Kim frowned. "What does that mean?"

"What in particular?" Tom asked her.

"What Billy just said," Kim replied.

Tom tilted his head at her, but obliged with the role Trini normally took on. "Billy said that he never took part in things that most people seem to think everybody does." He added, "Ubiquitous means something that's everywhere, all the time. Like McDonalds. They're everywhere all the time, so they're ubiquitous."

"Okay," Kimberly said, apparently indexing something away in her mind. "And what does everyone think he should be doing that he's not?"

"Being an overprotective older brother sort of person," Tom told her. "Like you were complaining about Jason and Zack and Aisha was saying about Adam and Rocky."

"Oh," Kimberly looked like she got it. "I see." She turned to her blue-clad friend. "And thanks for that. It's bad enough with two, I don't need three."

It all went so well that Tom gathered up his courage to ask Kim out on a second date, suggesting they go to the movies. She agreed and when he got back to the Lewises he almost didn't notice the concerned looks they sent his way when he came in.

Almost.


	5. Loss of Control

Disclaimer: Good heavens no, I own none of this. I'd be a lot richer if I did.

* * *

They were gathered at their usual table in the youth centre, but the tension was palpable. On one side were Billy, Zack and Kimberly, the other, Jason and Trini. "This needs to stop," Jason was saying. "We can't be divided over someone who's not even really part of the team."

"Perhaps if you enumerate your objections we can determine the issues to be resolved," Billy suggested. "At this point I am particularly uncertain as to the reasons Trini holds as important, while Jason I . . . do not wish to misunderstand yours."

"Enumerate?" Kimberly asked.

"List," Trini said with a startled glance at Kimberly. "If we-"

Kimberly interrupted. "No, I got the rest of it," she said, "It was just enumerate that got me." At Trini's look, she said, "Tom pointed out that it wasn't nice of us to just sort of blank out once Billy hits a word we don't know, and if I expect him to keep up with me when I get really valley girl, then it's only fair he should expect me to keep up with him when he's using SAT vocab."

Trini's lips pressed together a moment, but Jason looked thoughtful. "It's a good point," he said slowly. Then he looked at Billy. "It's some of what you mean, isn't it, when you say he listens to you?"

As that had been one of the most significant points Billy had in favour of Tom's inclusion into their group dynamic proper, he nodded eagerly. "It is not to say that I lack an understanding that my linguistic choices are less than ideal, given the more colloquial and simple way you all prefer to speak, but it was an attention to detail that I feel speaks well of Tom, not poorly."

"Colloquial?" Kimberly put in.

"Slang," Trini said, looking more sour, but also somewhat overset now.

Jason nodded slightly, then said, "Okay then. I really do want to know why it is that he thinks he needs to police the school's bullies, that's the first thing. It's unnecessary, and frankly I'm worried about the way he just resorts to violence so quickly."

This was the crux of the matter. Billy had asked Tom's permission to speak frankly about his friend's past, to be able to clarify and explain the reasons behind his actions.

"_Tom, I know you may not wish to have your personal experiences described to others, but it is difficult to give proper explanation of your motivations if I cannot tell the others what they are."_

_The long-haired boy frowned, then said, "I guess you're right. I just . . . I don't want pity and I . . . people don't look at you the same," he tried. "And sometimes they look down their noses at you as though it's your fault you don't have parents or don't have a legal guardian to sign off on things or . . ." he made a helpless gesture that turned into an angry punch into the wall next to him. "I just hate it."_

"_Jason is not without empathy," Billy tried to reassure him. "He will not think less of you because of circumstances you could not control."_

"It is complex, and Tom is most likely partially unaware of all his personal motivations," Billy admitted, "But it begins with his having been bullied as a child, and a complete refusal of every authority figure he applied to for assistance, to assist him."

There were sharp intakes of breath all around the table. "You mean, he'd ask a teacher for help and they just wouldn't?" Zack asked.

"He requested assistance of many teachers, apparently, and most of his early foster families, and was nearly universally refused aid, either with the bully in question, or a simple emotional support," Billy clarified.

"Foster families?" Leave it to Trini to pick out that important point.

Billy nodded. "Tom has been, effectively, orphaned twice over. His birth parents died when he was a baby, and the couple who adopted him, they also died when he was six. He has not had a stable, single home, since."

Jason could be very quick on the uptake as well. "That's the secret about why he didn't do well in school or at karate," he said slowly. "He's moved around so much that he wasn't able to take consistent classes in anything." He looked at Billy. "That's what you weren't telling me that time I complained about it."

Billy nodded. "The way in which he told me was indicative of a confidence," he agreed. "It is not information to be given to just anyone who expresses an interest. He agreed to allow me the right to tell you all the answers to these questions, but is hesitant nonetheless." He looked very seriously at the others. "Sometimes there have been those who treated him poorly because they feel his being orphaned and in foster care due to that is a negative personal characteristic."

"Wait," Zack said in disbelief, "They think he's a bad person because he has to live with a foster family 'cause he's an orphan? That's stupid."

A shrug was all Billy could offer in response. He didn't disbelieve Tom's assertion, but he didn't understand why anyone would think such a thing.

"But to get back on topic," Jason said, "So, he asked for help and didn't get it, so he just . . . what? Decided to take the law into his own hands?"

"I believe those experiences left him with the impression that there are no authority figures that can be trusted to provide assistance in such situations," Billy clarified.

Jason sat back, considering the theory. "It's true that he's been less violent since he started," the Red Ranger said slowly. "I guess because the teachers here don't let people get away with as much as he's used to?"

"He expressed great surprise when Bulk and Skull received detention for their role in damaging Priscilla's science fair project," Billy told them.

Nodding, Jason said, "Then I'll talk to him. See if we can't manage a fresh start," he said. "Maybe he'll come back to classes, then."

At that, Billy said hesitantly, "I doubt it. I think he's taken a liking to the ninjutsu he switched to in Stone Canyon. He has formed a close friendship with the three youths who act in an instructional capacity as you do," he told Jason.

"And you like having an excuse to see Aisha," Kim added with a grin.

"She _is_ cute," Zack said, nodding.

Kim put in, "And she and I went shopping yesterday. It was _great_. She knows this awesome shoe store and I got these _gorgeous_ wedges-"

Jason's eyes went wide and he said, clearly more to forestall Kimberly's descent into a discussion of the complexities of shopping, "Maybe I'll head out there, take in a class or two or something. Be interesting to meet these guys and show Tom that I'm willing to get along."

The Pink Ranger pouted and an agreement was reached to collectively allow Tom into their group. Trini, however, was oddly silent, morose even.

Still, she didn't _say_ anything, and there was little Billy could do save wait for her to explain her reticence when it came to Tom. When it came time for Tom's testing out to a higher belt level, only a few weeks later, they all travelled out to Stone Canyon to watch, Jason eyeing the proceedings with a professional and, from what Billy could tell, approving look. He frowned in confusion along with Tom when the Green Ranger was asked to do some things the others were not, and applauded when it turned out that it had been determined Tom should move up two levels, rather than the singular he'd been expecting.

Billy introduced Trini and Kimberly around to Rocky and Adam, keeping an eye on Jason and Tom's discussion on the far side of the room. It came to a satisfactory conclusion, by all appearances, Jason slapping Tom on the back in a comradely fashion, Tom looking startled and pleased.

In the end, everything seemed well, but for Trini's inexplicable upset.

* * *

When Billy arrived with the whole team in tow to watch Tom try for his next belt level, he felt a sudden wellspring of worry. Even the unexpected moment when Rocky told him he'd jumped two levels instead of the single one he'd been told hadn't quelled the concern he felt when Jason approached him.

"Hey," said the Red Ranger.

Well, that he could respond to, at least. "Hey."

Jason seemed to square his shoulders a moment before he said, "I feel like I should apologise. I made some judgments of you without all the facts and they weren't fair."

"It's not like I didn't know what it looks like when I try to make jerks see that there'll be consequences to being jerks," Tom said with a shrug. "I just . . . when you know you're not going anywhere in life anyhow, it doesn't really matter."

The shrewd look Jason shot him was uncomfortably like one Billy had once sent him, and Tom wondered what it was about. It wasn't as though he'd said anything particularly remarkable. "Still, with the things Billy was telling us, I should have given you a better chance." Then he grinned a bit. "My pride's a bit stung that you ran off to learn ninjutsu. Don't suppose I can tempt you back?"

At that, Tom laughed. "I think Adam would kill me if I left now. He said he's only just broken me of all the mixed up styles I learned and warned me off taking any other kinds of classes."

Jason grinned and slapped him on the back. "Two belts in one test, I'm impressed and a little jealous, frankly. I was never that good." He waved a hand at the group. "Come on. I know Zordon said something about how you're not part of the team really, but you and the Dragonzord are part of the team anyhow. So, come on. We'll celebrate, pizza's on me and Zack."

Everything was better when the others had accepted him. It was like a weight had been lifted he didn't even know was there. He no longer had to avoid Billy or Jason or anyone else in school for fear of upsetting someone.

The only person who was still upset was Trini and it came to a head one day after the mess where he'd let himself get caught by putties while the others had to face something Zordon had called a fang monster without him.

When it was over, the talent show demonstration Zack and Jason had put on of the two of them doing some showy sparring to music had gone on as scheduled, and Trini left her friends and dragged Tom off with her.

"I don't care what the others think," she told him. "They're wrong about you. You're trying to break us up and I won't let you. Don't think I don't know what you're doing." Trini was breathing hard and was flushed with anger.

Trying to understand, he asked, "What do you think I'm doing?"

"I see it," she said. "Buddying up with Billy first because he's the most vulnerable of us, being all . . . all sciency about the dinosaurs so you have stuff in common with him, introducing Kim to that Aisha girl so that she'll forget all about me, being a good fighter so that they don't need me on the team, and no one'll want me and . . . and . . . stop taking away my Billy!" she finished, tearfully. "He's mine! Everyone always needed my help translating and now they just . . . and he's not . . . you're taking them away from me!"

"I'm not," Tom protested, wondering if he'd figure out how to get through to her. So far her objections were more about . . . well . . . that she was scared he was stealing her friends. "If anyone's at risk of losing everything, it's me," he told her. "You've been friends with them all your whole life. Who am I? Some kid from out of town with bad grades and the ability to break heads."

"But they don't need me anymore," Trini said. "Kimberly's got Aisha, and they both like shopping and all those girly things I don't really do, Billy's got you, so he doesn't need me to translate, Jason and Zack don't need me, they've got someone else who'd good at martial arts to be there," her voice cracked. "The team doesn't need me."

"If they don't need you," Tom asked, "Then what happened this afternoon? You think they would have been fine without you?"

She paused. "But we needed your help-"

"Zordon asked me to help because he was concerned Rita was going to send down things you guys couldn't handle without extra help. Not because I was supposed to replace someone," Tom said bluntly. "If there's one fewer of you, that's not going to make anything better. As for Kimberly, do you really think a new shopping buddy's going to replace someone she's known since kindergarten? You think Billy's not still going to need someone to translate the ten-dollar words for him? I don't go to his AP classes and the rest of you do."

The resentful look on her face had eased somewhat, but she still looked suspicious. "And Jason?" she asked. "Zack?"

"First of all, Zack is Jason's best friend, I don't think I'm getting in between them, and I'm not taking karate from Jason, I'm taking ninjutsu in Stone Canyon from Rocky, Adam and Aisha, mostly Adam. And," he continued, "If you're worried about losing Billy to Aisha and Rocky, they live in another town. It's not like he can just spend all his time with them when he goes to school here and Rita's attacking here and all his friends are here."

From the look on her face, she had been about to worry about the Stone Canyon trio. But now she looked thoughtful and not like she was about to both burst into tears and beat him to a pulp. "I guess that was kind of silly of me," she said.

"Not silly," Tom told her. "Do you know how terrified I am all the time that Billy's going to realise that I'm not smart enough to hang around him and just go back to the nice kids he's used to?"

"Don't fish for compliments, it's not becoming," Trini said.

He hadn't been fishing for anything, but he shrugged that off. "Does this mean you don't want me dead anymore?" he asked hopefully. "Because that's really uncomfortably worrying. Especially the part where you're so good with small, easily concealed sharp things."

She shot him a look and said, "I'll think about it."

"I'm overwhelmed by your complete and total acceptance," Tom replied dryly.

Trini looked at him steadily for a few moments, then said, "Come on. Let's join the rest of the team."

It was only natural that this moment marked the beginning of the trouble. Trini wasn't exactly friendly, but she stopped being openly hostile, which was enough to work around. But starting slowly, Tom kept coming back to the Lewises after school, seeing worried looks on their faces and hushed phone calls that they'd hang up from when they clearly hadn't finished. Fairly quickly it became obvious it was something to do with him. The whole thing was weird. Tom had never seen any of the adults in his foster homes act like this and he couldn't imagine why they were.

And then he got captured by Goldar while trying to work up the nerve to ask Kimberly to a dance. "Why am I here?" he demanded after a failed attempt at getting past the monkey's defenses.

"It's simple," Goldar told him with an obscene grin on his face. "If you serve Rita you can keep your powers. If not, you'll lose them when the candle burns out."

What did that even mean? "What candle?"

"The green candle," Goldar said, standing aside to show the sickly green, glowing and already burning candle behind him. "It's made of very special wax. When it burns out, Rita will have stolen your powers." At the look on Tom's face, Goldar began to laugh.

Tom took a deep breath and began to try to look for openings. If he could get to the morpher he could deal with Goldar. That was more important right now. The problem here was that there was nothing here he could use for his usual tricks. No tree branches or rusty fire escapes to turn to makeshift weapons, no friends to rely on and a tiny pocket dimension which was probably no bigger than the tiny room they were in. He still had to try, and that meant going for the one chance he had – disarming Goldar and getting the sword away from him.

A few hits at the breastplate Goldar wore told Tom this was going to be as futile as when he was six and that twelve-year-old jerk had taken to shaking him down every day on the way to school. What that meant was that he was going to have to go for this the way he did that day, the way he did when he was eight and a whole pack of other kids had harassed him every day on the way back to the then-current foster home, the way he had that one time he'd been in a cage fight with that guy who was built like a tank. Pinpoint where he needed to hit, then take whatever damage got dished out to hit that point.

The point was Goldar's right hand.

Again and again he dove towards the alien, striking at his opponent's wrist and hand. He was sure he felt his ribs bruise and then crack under the assault, but that wasn't important. He ignored the pain, twisting and diving, striking with feet and fists and whatever came close to Goldar's hand. He couldn't suppress the cry that escaped him when he went sprawling and a gold-clad and clawed foot came down on his arm. He still swung around, a foot striking at the right hand again.

The sword flew into the air, Tom scrambling for it, but there was one problem. He was bruised and aching and the sharp pains he felt in his ribs and arm told him that something was probably cracked. He couldn't move fast enough and Goldar retrieved his sword. With a snarl and a gesture, Tom was suddenly and painfully wrapped in chains of pure energy. "Enough!" Goldar snapped. "I will not put up with any more of this foolishness!"

"Don't like that a 'puny human' could get your sword away from you?" Tom taunted. It was stupid, but maybe he could find some other weakness to exploit. Even as he spoke, though, the adrenaline started to wear away, the soreness, stinging, aching and stabbing pains all over began to eat up his attention. He hurt so much.

Rita's voice echoed through the chamber, calling Goldar away. Breathing deeply, Tom struggled with both the pain and the chains, hoping to find some way out.

And then Goldar had returned. "I'm back, and happy to report that your miserable friends are losing the battle." With a smirk the gold plated monkey removed his chains. Carefully he stretched and flexed, testing out what he needed to favour in a fight.

Bravado made him say, "You won't defeat them, Goldar." He knew better than anyone that it was possible to beat the Rangers, but he couldn't give the monkey the satisfaction. More, as long as Goldar was there taunting Tom, he wasn't out there forcing the Rangers onto the ropes.

"Once she has your power, Rita will be able to defeat everyone," Goldar informed him.

"She'll never have it," Tom said. _Just keep talking_.

"Oh, she will. See how it burns?" Goldar taunted him.

And that did work to get his ire up. Because Tom could feel the way the power was fading, could feel that the increased healing offered by being a Ranger was tapering off ever so slightly. Still, he was better enough that when Goldar taunted him, he went for the bait. He could at least work out some of his anger and keep the monkey there.

But this time Goldar was overconfident and Tommy got his sword away from him. With a last look at the candle, knowing he didn't have the ability to deal with Goldar then, he took the chance to get away, rushing to help the team. His power _was_ waning. It took him two tries to call out the Dragonzord, and he was grateful he still had the chance to heal up, because he wasn't going to be any good in a fight like he was.

As they teleported into the Command Centre and demorphed, the pain Tom had been ignoring finally peaked and the grey around the edges of his vision crawled over and the world went blank. When he woke up, he was on a cot in the Command Centre, Billy sitting next to him, waiting on him to wake up. "You have regained cognisance!" Billy said with a smile. "I have been concerned." The smile fell away. "Zordon and Alpha have indicated that your . . . the powers of the Green Ranger-"

"Rita's draining them. I know," Tom told him tiredly. "Goldar bragged about this candle that when it burns out I'll lose them."

"Can you tell me any further details before I inform Zordon and Alpha of this new data?" Billy asked.

Tom shrugged. "Only that Goldar said it was made from some sort of special wax."

"I thought I heard voices," Trini said from the door. "Can I come in a moment?" she asked.

Billy looked at her a little suspiciously, but said, "Inform me if Tom needs something. I'm going to add this information to the collected data in Zordon's search for the reason behind Tom's power drain."

He left, leaving Tom alone with Trini. "I'm sorry," she said.

"For what?" Tom asked.

She shook her head. "For treating you so badly. For being suspicious for no really good reason. Jason gave me a talking-to while you were unconscious."

Tom sat up. His ribs were now down to just tender, not cracked, his arm was hurting, but that wasn't broken anymore either. "It's okay, Trini. It's actually been kind of weird the way everyone just trusts me and stuff."

"Should you be sitting up?" she asked, sitting next to him as though to provide support.

He hissed a little, but pushed himself to his feet. "I'm okay. The power's fixed up the worst of it. I've had worse than this, anyhow."

"Tom-" Trini was interrupted by the rest of the team arriving.

Jason was over first, saying, "Man, you don't know how worried I was when you demorphed and you looked like you'd gone three rounds with a grizzly bear."

"I feel like it," Tom admitted. "But I've had worse. It probably looks worse than it is."

"Well, hopefully you look fine by the dance," Kimberly told him. "Because I'd hate to have the pictures of us have you all bruised in them."

He whipped around to stare at her. "Zack kind of told her that you'd been planning to ask her to the dance," Jason told him.

"Zack," he turned to glare at the Black Ranger. "Man." Tom turned to Kim. "I swear I was going to ask you, and then the putties attacked."

She smiled. "It's cool. But it's good to know you really _were_ going to ask me."

The next twenty-four hours were just a parade of depressing events. Tom having to go fight, Jason gone into the dark dimension after Tom's powers, having to pass the powers on to Jason before Rita got them and then having to face that he'd know every time Billy and Kimberly were out there without him watching their backs, and he wouldn't be able to protect them.

Zordon had been right about that. It really was killing him over the next couple weeks to know that he couldn't help, couldn't protect his first and best friend, and he overcompensated, trailing around after Billy in school until the other teen snapped at him to give him some breathing space.

"Tom?" Mrs. Lewis said hesitantly when he got back home that evening. "We have some . . . news for you." She gestured at the living room. "Come in and sit down."

The moment he came into the room he knew what was coming. The man on the couch was a child services worker if ever Tom had seen one. Mr. Lewis, however, was the one to start. "So, when we first took you in," he said, "It was supposed to be temporary, at least until they'd found out where you were from."

Tom nodded. He hadn't particularly hidden who he was, but he also hadn't helped them track down his past in any particular way. He also wasn't going to say anything. He'd learned a long time ago that saying anything in meetings with child services people just went badly for him. "We found the records in New York," said the man after a silence which Tom refused to fill. "So, you're going back to where you came from."

"We would have kept you," Mr. Lewis said, looking guilty. _And well he ought to_, Tom thought. "But my new job is in Cleveland and this was only supposed to be temporary."

Tom still refused to say anything, forcing them to finish. "So, as soon as you're packed I'll take you back to your foster family," the CPS man said. "I mean, in New York."

He couldn't keep the one comment from slipping out. "Well, I guess it's a good thing I didn't unpack after all," he said, and headed upstairs. There was no point in fighting it, and Tom just went upstairs, collected the few things he had left out and was back downstairs in under twenty minutes.

It was a strange thing, heading back to the city he'd fled from a year before. Running away he'd gone by foot, by hitchhiking, the rare bus and crisscrossing the countryside as he went. It had taken weeks and weeks. Going back was done by airplane, and it was a strange thing to be back there in just a few hours time. Even stranger was that he was greeted at the gate, since the CPS man back in California hadn't come on the plane, just sent him off, by another child services worker, this one a woman. She tried to be friendly, but Tom knew that one. They'd tell everything they learned to some authority or other and the next thing you know you're in a court-mandated therapy with a therapist who wouldn't believe you when you tried to tell them something, so convinced that they knew you before they met you.

And then there they were, in front of a house he'd sworn never to return to, and Tom couldn't believe the purity of his bad luck. There he was, back inside that house, too many people in too small a space, all of them squabbling for time and just praying to avoid Nate Robinson, who was ill-tempered when sober and terrifying the rest of the time.

This time Tom was watched. He tried running three times, the third time found him zigging when he should have zagged and the swing of the beer bottle caught him, leaving him dazed, and Tom spent a night half conscious in the basement. He never quite knew how he made it out the next morning, stumbling down the street to get to anywhere but where he'd been.

"Tom?" A burst of Spanish that sounded vaguely like someone was swearing and he was being half-carried down the street and into a house.

The confusion resolved when he'd been sitting still for long enough to catch his breath. "Rocky?" he breathed in shock. "What are you doing here?"

"Visiting family," Rocky said, his head jerking to indicate the small crowd of people in the bedroom doorway. "The real question, Tom, is what're _you_ doing here?"

Shaking his head, then wincing as pain spiked, Tom explained, "CPS caught up with me finally. Decided they should drop me with my last foster family, since the Lewises're in Cleveland by now-"

"Lewises?" came a female voice. "What are you talking about?" she asked. "Is your family not able to care for you?"

"Mom," Rocky said, looking embarrassed.

"I don't have a family," Tom told her, feeling defiant. He'd seen those looks before. The ones that said that he was _wrong_ because he didn't have anyone he could call blood kin. That it made him _wrong_ in some indefinable way. "I'm an orphan and my adoptive parents died when I was six."

"And no other family?" Mrs. DeSantos asked.

Tom just looked at her. "No. None." He waited for that look that said he didn't deserve to even breathe the same air she did.

He was instead rewarded by another burst of Spanish and the woman shoving her son over to pet Tom and fuss and say a lot of words he couldn't follow because he really didn't speak the language. "What happened to you?" Rocky asked around his mother as she buzzed around the room, apparently installing Tom in her son's bed.

Tom was sure that he must have gone soft. It was the only reason he could think of why he was just melting under the fussing, letting the fact that he had a soft bed with no springs poking through the top relax him, even the pains he felt as the cut on his head was gently sponged and cleaned off felt nice. It was why he muzzily said, "Nate Robinson's just a mean drunk. Not as bad as the one before. Robinson's at least sober some of the time."

Feeling like he might actually be safe, Tom dozed off only to wake to a screaming match in the room next to the one he was in. Rocky was sitting on the bed opposite. "Glad to see you're awake."

"What's going on?" Tom asked.

"What? Oh. That's just how Mom and Dad argue," Rocky told him dismissively. "Mom shrieks and Dad yells and they work it out." Indeed a minute later there was silence, then Rocky made a face and shut the bedroom door to muffle the noises coming in from the next room. "I just wish they wouldn't make up _right after_. Ick."

Sitting up, Tom pushed himself to his feet, feeling the room do a lazy rotation around him, but definitely better off than he was used to feeling after this sort of thing. Still, he'd definitely gone soft after becoming used to the way the Green Ranger powers would heal him up to be ready for the next battle. "Well, thanks for letting me crash," he said. "But I need to get back."

"To the guy who did this to you?" Rocky demanded. "That's crazy."

"That's life," Tom said dismissively. "Anyhow, someone's got to go and make sure he takes his temper out on someone who can take it. He's got a new kid in there and she's only eight. She won't know how to keep her head down yet."

Rocky looked appalled. "Go to the police!" he said. "You can't expect-"

"What? That they'll listen to a house full of juvenile delinquents?" Tom asked. "Please. Everyone knows all us almost-gone-to-juvie foster kids are liars, cheats and drains on the system." He was steadier now that he'd been on his feet a minute or two. "And social services'll just bring me back once he's faked them out."

Once he was in the hallway, he found himself ducking around people, including a woman who looked a little like Rocky's mom, pounding on the next door and shouting what sounded a lot like the Spanish version of, "Get a room that's not mine!"

As they headed down the stairs, Rocky said, "Family reunion. It's always chaos."

Two kids slid by on the banister, one making it safely down, the other nearly falling over the side. It was second nature to catch kids who didn't care about property or safety who were about to get themselves killed. Happened all the time in the foster homes he'd been in. So, he caught the boy, dropping him onto the stairs and continuing on. He was a little startled when Rocky stayed behind, yelling at little Frankie about being careful and not getting hurt. However, it was none of his business, and the kid actually had a family who cared, so maybe it would work on him.

Just as he reached the door, someone tugged on his shirt and he turned to see Frankie, Rocky right behind him, looking up at him. "Thanks for catching me when I fell," said the kid.

"No problem," he said. "Just keep in mind that someone may not always be there to catch you if you do things like that." He'd've given advice on how to not fall off in the first place, but that was probably not done in normal respectable families. "I gotta go."

"Okay, bye!" Frankie vanished down the hall at speed and Rocky seemed to have determined to follow Tom the whole way back to the Robinson's.

He was watching Tom critically. "You're limping, even if you're trying not to show it," he said. "Why are you going back?"

"I already told you," Tom said. They walked the rest of the way in silence, Rocky clearly thinking hard. About what, Tom had no idea.

Rocky just followed him right up onto the porch, in the door, down the hall, and then Tom was aware of Rocky freezing in the doorway to the living room. Eight-year-old Shawna was scrambling away from Nate Robinson, who was about to bring a hand down on her that would do some serious damage. Tom didn't freeze. He just barrelled right into the room, telling Shawna, "Go upstairs, now!"

Before he could take the blow, though, Rocky was between them, blocking it and taking a hell of a hit on his arm. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" he demanded.

"That brat's mine to discipline as I see fit," Robinson informed Rocky. "Now get out of my house. As for you," he turned to Tom. "Where were you all day?"

"Out," Tom said. "Rocky, go."

"No," Rocky said calmly. "I'm not going to let you get beaten up by this guy just because you think the police won't help."

"Why you little-" slurred Robinson, then took a swing at Rocky, who ducked easily out of the way.

It was about then that Tom's world descended into a chaos that was just as strange as when Billy had befriended him. Because it seemed like half of Rocky's family had followed them to the Robinson household, freaked when they saw the man take a swing at Rocky, and over the next several hours Tom found himself being dragged all over half the town, in and out of police stations, social services offices and an emergency session in front of a judge.

"Mr. Oliver," said the man soberly. "It truly pains me to see how badly our system has failed you." Tom just stood there, wondering what was going to happen next. He'd had a system, before Robinson had made things just too intolerable to live with, and crossing the country when he ran away to California he'd had a system. He'd known who and what he was, even if it wasn't very pleasant, and he'd been content with that. The judge seemed to be waiting for him to acknowledge the statement, but Tom stuck to waiting. What could he say? Finally the judge continued. "With our inability to contact those individuals in Angel Grove your friend Mr. DeSantos has claimed are your closest acquaintances, I've had to come to a decision regarding your continued care without consulting those families."

What did _that_ mean? They'd tried to call Billy and Zack and the others about him? About what – suddenly, a different substance of what the man said reached Tom. "Inability to contact?" he asked. "What do you mean?"

"We tried calling the homes of all of your friends," it was explained. "We haven't gotten an answer. Since your situation requires intervention now, I'm forced to make a provisional determination." Looking at the DeSantos family standing behind Tom, the judge continued. "Despite your family's willingness to take Mr. Oliver in, I am frankly concerned that he requires more attention than you can spare, given the size of your household. It's not to impugn your abilities as parents," he reassured the elder DeSantoses, "But Mr Oliver, from everything that I've heard, will require time that you most likely do not have." He turned back to Tom. "But, upon the recommendations of your friend here," he nodded at Rocky, "I contacted the family of another friend of yours. The Parks have agreed to take you in. With only one other child," he paused. "Pardon me, I don't mean child in literal terms, merely legal ones. Anyhow," he continued again. "With only one other minor in the household, the Parks are better suited to providing Mr. Oliver with the necessary attention he will doubtless require."

Another round of wondering what that meant rattled around in Tom's head. Did they think he was going to need a parent to whine to about something? Did they think he was going to need constant supervision? Discipline? He hated this. There was nothing he could do to fit this into his safe little boxes of how people acted. Billy and the others were Power Rangers. That meant that they were weird. Them accepting him was just one more thing that showed how exceptional they were. He didn't go to school with Rocky, Adam and Aisha. They didn't live in the same town. Obviously he'd kept his best foot forward with them, so they _couldn't_ know he was violent and kind of stupid. They'd only seen him hanging around with Billy for the most part, after all.

But this judge, he wasn't acting normal. It wasn't right. Where were the immediate assumptions it was all his fault? Where were the people looking at his grades and loudly telling everyone he'd need remedial help? Waiting for the other shoe to drop was killing him. On top of all that, he was wondering if Billy and the others were okay. Did they need him? Were their families not at home because something terrible had happened to the other – to the Rangers?

While he was lost in his thoughts, the judge's directions about who was going to be Tom's legal guardians finished. He was hustled back to the DeSantos household where he'd be spending the next couple days until the Parks arrived to bring him home with them. It was hours, the middle of the night in fact, before he was able to get away, try to get his head on straight and make sense of everything that had gone on.

It was child's play to crack open the window, slip out and onto the roof. Sitting against the chimney he reached for the communicator three times before he told himself to stop it. Billy didn't need him bugging him in the middle of the night, didn't need him hanging around making him crazy and . . . remembering his friend's aggravated glare from the last time Tom had played bulldog just made something in Tom's chest hurt. He'd obviously blown it. He hadn't really had time to let it sink in ever since he'd been bundled out of Angel Grove and back to New York.

Now he was going to be _living_ with one of those friends he'd made. This one wasn't a Power Ranger. Didn't have that special something-or-other that would mean he'd be able to ignore all of Tom's flaws. The ones that meant adults thought he was a waste of time and other kids to think he was a thug. "Just a couple more years," he murmured to himself softly. "Just three and it'll all stop."

"What'll stop?" Rocky asked.

Tom's head snapped up to stare at the other boy perched on the roof next to him. "What're you doing here?" he asked.

Rocky smiled. "I've got a lot of younger siblings," he said. "You get used to listening for someone sneaking in to stick your hand into a bowl of warm water." Then the smile dropped away. "What'll stop in three years, Tom?"

"This," Tom said, waving a hand around. He was just so confused and he let it all spill out. "All these people who look at me and think they can help me. They can't. I don't know . . . I wish they'd all just stop. Every time someone tries to help it just gets worse. I get a worse foster family, worse school." He shook his head. "It was all better when I ran away. Simple. A lie here and there, cage fights with suckers who thought I couldn't hurt 'em and odd jobs when I found them."

"Doesn't sound all that great," Rocky said frankly. "I mean, cage fights?"

"It was cool," Tom tried. He gestured at his side where he'd been asked before about the line of scarring. "I mean, okay, it was touch and go for a bit that time the jerk with that rusty knife got me, but-"

"Cool!?" Rocky squawked. "That scar's from someone who brought a knife into a fight with a fourteen-year-old?"

"He thought I was sixteen," Tom said.

His friend looked at him like he was nuts. "You want to go back to that?" he asked, incredulous. "Billy said you were doing better in school. Actually he-"

"He doesn't want me hanging around anymore," Tom said. When Rocky raised an eyebrow, Mr. Spock-like, he hastily said, "No, really. This isn't like that time with Rita. It was totally my fault and I get it."

"Forgive me if I think your opinion's a little suspicious," Rocky grumbled. "The last time you sounded like that we had to tackle you until you stopped being stupid about what Billy thought."

"The point is," Tom said over Rocky, "That I hate waiting for the other shoe to drop. How long d'you think the Parks'll put up with me? Really? I'm not smart, I'm not . . . not _good_." His voice cracked when he tried to continue. "It's better if I don't get my hopes up . . ." he trailed off, because the only thing worse than letting them see you sweat was letting them see you cry.

He was horrified when a warm arm wrapped around his shoulders. Rocky said, "You're our friend, Tom. You're a perfectly decent guy who's had a few – a lot of bad breaks. Okay? Adam's parents want to help you. Adam wants to help you. So do I and so does Aisha. So do my folks or they wouldn't have tried to offer to take you in."

And it was stupid of him. It was stupid and idiotic and hopeless and . . . just stupid. But it was a feeling like when Billy had said he trusted Tom with his things and Zack had roughhoused with him like he was just one of the guys. It was a little like something he dimly remembered from when he was six and his mom had put a Thundercats band-aid on his knee when he skinned it. It was a good feeling and Tom just sat there silently, closing his eyes and trying to memorise what that felt like for later on when everything fell apart the way it inevitably would.

"Come on," Rocky told him eventually. "We'd better get back to bed. My mother will probably explode into a million pieces if she catches us out here, and then I'll be grounded until I'm thirty."

"Wouldn't want that," Tom said, grateful his voice was steady when he spoke. "It'd be hard for you and Zack to compete about who's doing worse with girls if you couldn't see any to scare them away."

Rocky's response was pithy and something his mother would probably also have grounded him for.


	6. Phoning and Family

Disclaimer: Good heavens no, I own none of this. I'd be a lot richer if I did.

Notes: Ah, finally a whole chapter of nothing but Billy. Well, sort of. Billy's PoV, anyhow. It's a little short, but the next one will be longer and I didn't want this to be a bazillion times longer than all the other chapters. Again, if someone wants to see something, or even just point out something where I messed up, you gotta PM or review, because I don't have a beta and it won't be caught otherwise.

* * *

After Tom's guard dog impression, it was a welcome relief when he vanished for a day. After that, Billy started to get worried. When he called the Lewis residence, at first he received the information that the telephone line was disconnected, then he started to get a wrong number. Upon going to the house, he was startled to see it was no longer occupied by the couple and Tom, but by a new family.

Truly concerned, he volunteered to help in the school's office the next day, only to discover that Tom had been officially transferred from Angel Grove High, to where, he could not determine.

"He's just gone?" Kimberly asked, eyes wide, when he told them. "He didn't say anything?"

Billy shook his head. "I have heard nothing from him and I have yet to determine where he may have gone." A thought occurred to him. "He did indicate in the past that he has often experienced frequent alterations in the identities of his caretakers. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that he has been sent to another foster care home."

"Just like that?" Jason said, concerned. "With no warning?"

"He never did unpack his things from his luggage," Billy replied. "Tom seemed to expect it."

Zack exchanged looks with Jason, then said, "That's harsh, man."

Practical as always, Trini said, "Then we'll just have to find him and let him know we're still his friends. He can write to us. Keep us posted on where he is."

"And if we can't find him the normal way," Kimberly proposed, "We'll ask Zordon if we can use the Command Centre to find him. I mean, it's not like that's abusing anything. He's one of us."

It was a reasonably logical argument for use should Zordon balk at the idea, but Billy preferred to save using those resources for more urgent things. So, while he searched various records attempting to determine Tom's location, life went on.

Then the whole of Angel Grove got sucked into one of Rita's dark dimensions and that was a terrible several hours as they struggled desperately to beat her and her monsters without Tom's steadfast help. It was on coming home after the whole debacle was over, including the continuation of Power Rangers Day that had gone ahead despite the drama that had gone before, that Billy heard about Tom.

"Billy!" his father called. "Would you take down the messages on the answering machine?"

"Affirmative!" he called back.

*_Beep* Billy, man, this is Rocky. It's about Tom. Call me._ A number with a New York area code was left.

_*Beep* Billy? It's Rocky again. Seriously. Hurry up and call. Tom's . . . it's not good. You've got the number._

_*Beep* Mr. Cranston, this is Hannah Roos from the New York CPS. It was recommended that I contact you about the possibility of you taking temporary guardianship of one Thomas Oliver. Please call me at_ another phone number with a New York area code.

_*Beep* Mr. Cranston, this is Hannah Roos, I called earlier. Please return my call at your earliest convenience. My number is_ the same number followed as the last time.

_*Beep* Billy, please pick up, it's Rocky again. Seriously, where are all you guys? I've called Zack, Jason, Trini and Kim too. Call me._

_*Beep* Billy? It's Adam. Park. When they couldn't get ahold of you and your dad, Rocky volunteered us. So, looks like Tom's moving to Stone Canyon. Call me asap. Rocky says Tom thinks you hate him. Again._

_*Beep* Hey, it's Aisha. Are you guys okay? No one's answering when we call. I just heard the news about Tom moving in with Adam's family 'cause his latest foster family was beating him. Rocky was kinda scanty on the details but he seems pretty upset. Call me._

What had happened while everyone was in the dark dimension? What had happened to Tom while he was trying the regular ways of finding him? Billy felt a surge of guilt. He knew Tom reacted poorly when others became angered at him, and yet he'd snapped instead of finding a calmer way to handle the situation.

His first order of business was calling Rocky. He got a busy signal over and over again before he finally got through. "Can I speak to Rocky, please?"

"Billy? Man, I'm glad to hear from you. Kim was just telling me all about being stuck in an alternate dimension or something."

"Yes," Billy was oddly grateful Kim had beaten him to the call. At least he hadn't had to explain why they hadn't answered. She was better at not sounding suspicious when these things needed explaining. "I've been trying to call for the last half hour. I assume Kimberly has been monopolising the telephone?"

Rocky laughed. "You got that right." Then the amusement faded and he sounded worried. "Billy? What happened with you and Tom?"

How to explain? "There was another incident with Rita Repulsa's monsters," Billy said carefully. "Tom reacted by becoming overprotective of me. I became . . . irritated."

"He was hovering?" Rocky asked. "Because it seems like something he'd do."

Billy sighed. "He did. And when I expressed my vexation it was perhaps not in the most . . . tactful of ways."

"So," there was a sudden scuffling sound and Rocky's voice sounded oddly muffled when he said, "You don't hate Tom, right?"

"No," Billy said, confused.

There was a pause, then he heard Tom's voice, muffled as Rocky's was. "He's not going to say something else when you ask him," protested the former Green Ranger.

"He said it, no take-backs," Rocky half sang. "Talk to Billy, Tom."

Another lengthy pause passed, then Billy said, "Tom? Are you still on the line?"

"Yeah," Tom said. "Look. I'm sorry, okay? It just . . . when Z-" There was a pause, and Billy, hearing ambient noise of other persons, assumed that Tom was trying to determine a way to explain without risking the secrecy maintained by the Rangers.

"Zordon?" Billy asked. "I understand you are among other people," he assured Tom. "I will attempt to follow whatever subterfuge you use."

"Thanks," Tom said with a small laugh. "Yeah, him. He said it'd make me crazy seeing you getting walloped without me there to back you up, and he's right. It does."

"I can take care of myself in such situations, Tom," Billy reminded him. "I can morph, you know."

"I know," Tom sounded miserable. "And Kim said that too, but I just . . ." he trailed off again.

"You have determined your goal is to act as a protector," Billy said. "It upsets you when you are prevented from performing as such. I do see, but-"

"Are you talking to Tom?" came Trini's voice behind him.

He turned to see her and the others standing behind him. "Yes. Tom? The others have just arrived. Do you want to talk?" He looked at them and Trini held out an imperious hand.

"Tom? Kimberly called me after she talked to you. You're being stupid."

Billy shook his head and left Trini to attempt talking sense into Tom. "Let me guess," Kimberly said, looking mildly irate. "He gave you that junk about wanting to protect us."

"Affirmative," Billy nodded at her.

Her face screwed up and she spoke in a strange tone clearly meant as a mockery of Tom. "It's not that I don't trust you, I just don't trust Rita's monsters."

"Tom," Trini was saying, "You don't have to protect everyone, that's not why we're your friends." She paused, listening, then said, "So . . . you're saying you think Billy spends time with you out of pity?"

"Not this again," Billy groaned. "It is most stressful maintaining a friendship with someone suffering from poor self-esteem."

"I'm nice, but I'm not that nice," Trini told Tom. "Seriously. Don't ever try to tell me that Zack is a paragon of anything ever again."

Zack turned to stare at Trini. "I think I should be insulted," he said. "I'm just not totally sure why."

"Jason either," Trini said.

"Now I think _I_ should probably be insulted," Jason mused.

A few more exchanges later and she was handing the telephone back to Billy. "Here."

"Hello?" Billy said.

"When this call is over, tell Trini I'm still terrified of her stabbing me to death," Tom said.

"Tell her that yourself," Billy suggested.

"Not while I'm scared she'll find a way to crawl through the phone and kill me," Tom told him. There was a pause. "Do you think I'm stupid?" he asked.

The non sequitur made Billy blink. "In general or at this specific point in time?" Billy asked. "Because in general you have struck me as eminently intelligent, often more so than some others I could name."

"Bulk and Skull don't count," Tom said, laughing.

"I was thinking of . . ." Billy paused, looked at the friends he considered the greatest in the world, his teammates, fellow Power Rangers, and decided to go ahead anyhow. "Zack, for one. Honestly, his pursuit of Angela leaves something to be desired in its indications of his intellectual capacity."

"What is this, pick on Zack day?"

"You make it so easy," Kimberly told him.

A sigh. "Okay. And right now?"

"Trini's right, you're being stupid," Billy said, echoing her blunt assessment. "And I am entirely certain you would receive the same evaluation from Rocky, Aisha and Adam."

"Wow," Zack said. "I was worried for a second there."

"Yeah, Billy. You sounded kinda normal and stupid like the rest of us," Kimberly added.

He ignored them. "Tom, friends are allowed to be mildly irate with one another without it meaning the friendship is at an end. Interpersonal relationships do not maintain a perfect amicability at all times."

"I just . . ." Tom seemed at a loss.

"We will work on this once you are back," Billy told him.

"I'll be in Stone Canyon," Tom objected.

"If Aisha's presence in Stone Canyon does not present a significant obstacle to my relationship with her," Billy said, "I hardly think that such distance will offer a different result in my friendship with you."

"I dunno," Tom said, his voice suddenly teasing. "I think Aisha has some things I don't have that might make you put in extra effort where she's concerned."

Before he had to come up with a reply, the sound of Rocky getting into a physical altercation with Tom over saying things of that nature about Aisha emerged from the telephone. "Billy," Rocky's breathless voice came down the line, "Tom has to go because I have to _explain_ to him that Aisha doesn't have any things he needs to be talking about. For the record, I shouldn't be hearing any _things_ where you're – awk!"

There was a click, but Billy turned away from the telephone, rolling his eyes. "Rocky and Tom are now in an altercation on the topic of Aisha."

"Why?" Jason frowned.

Kimberly was glaring at Jason and Zack. "It's big brother syndrome, isn't it?" she asked.

"I suspect something of that nature, as before he hung up Rocky was attempting to warn me about ill-treatment of Aisha," Billy informed her.

She made a disgusted sound. "Boys," Kimberly muttered, glaring at Jason and Zack all over again.

"That reminds me," Jason said to Zack. "We need to _talk_ to Tom about-"

"Don't you dare!" Kimberly shrieked.

Billy ignored the byplay and collected a notepad and pen. Sometimes, handwriting notes on conundrums he was faced with could be both soothing and helpful to the thought process. As he wrote down his rather abstracted thoughts on the matter of Tom's self-esteem, as well as his potential adaptation to a more normalised parental interaction, he was joined by Trini.

"What's got you so interested?" she asked.

"Tom's psychological issues regarding his sense of self-worth, his tendencies to mildly anarchic violence-"

Frowning, Trini interrupted. "Anarchic? I mean, I know what the word means, but how do you apply anti-government sentiment to Tom, exactly?"

"His lack of trust in the system of justice, whether school-based or otherwise, has led Tom to make many of his actions based on a principle of lack of effective governance," Billy explained. "It is having quite a negative impact on his educational career."

Trini nodded and they both ducked the cushion flying through the air from Kimberly's altercation with Zack and Jason. It was second nature. "Suspension number eight hundred and three," Trini said with commendable hyperbole. "I honestly don't know how he passes."

"He brings to bear a tremendous degree of focus in very short passages of time," Billy said. "Enough that he can succeed at a passable grade average." It was the pattern he'd noticed. "He puts in little effort otherwise, convinced he lacks the capability to perform well constantly and consistently."

"Self-sabotage?" Trini inquired. "Not deliberate, of course, but still . . ."

"Exactly," Billy said. "In fact, I am of the belief that it may behoove us to apply to Adam on Tom's behalf, explaining Tom's difficulties."

She shot him a sceptical look. "So, going behind his back?"

"Not exactly," Billy explained. "As Tom has never been in the milieu of a home with legal guardians who perform such tasks as discipline as well as offering monetary support and lodging, Tom may well come into conflict with them due to a lack of understanding of the rules innately understood by others. By offering Adam these explanations in advance, he may be able to . . . head off as it were, some of the difficulties Tom will undergo over the course of an adjustment period." He looked hopefully at Trini, who was clearly giving his idea serious consideration.

She slowly nodded. "But I think we'd be better off doing it when Tom's aware we're doing it. The last thing we want to do is have him think we don't trust him or we're doing things behind his back. And that sort of thing is too easy to slip up on and say, 'This is just like what Billy warned me about,' or something."

A call to the Park home that evening, and the next day the Power Rangers headed out to Stone Canyon to help the Parks with clearing out the spare room that had been in use as a sort of junk storage room and set it up for Tom's use.

"Oh, look," Adam smiled reminiscently when Billy uncovered a box of toy dinosaurs. "I remember those. I stopped playing with them, but when Mom tried to sell them at a garage sale I pitched a fit and wouldn't let her."

"These are eminently accurate," Billy said, interested. They were excellent representations. "Oh, triceratops," he heard himself say.

Looking amused, Adam said, "You want them?"

Billy shook off his distraction. "Actually, no. I was figuring on leaving the collection out for Tom. His paleontological aspirations should be encouraged," he said.

"Pterodactyl!" Kimberly squealed as she passed by. A moment later she had the toy ornithodira in hand and was digging in the box. "T-rex . . . hmm . . ."

"A mastodon and saber toothed tiger are not dinosaurs," Billy told her. "I suspect you will not find such in here. Adam seems to have been reasonably determined to stay within the bounds of the Mesozoic."

"Then I'll have to go buy them," Kim said. "In the meantime," she dropped the tyrannosaurus back into the box and waved the pterodactyl at them, "Tom's got the most important one."

He smirked at her, taking the flying reptile away and replacing it with the triceratops. "Yes, the triceratops."

"I really don't want to know," Adam said, "But sure. We can set the dinosaurs up on a shelf for Tom."

With six teenagers, seven when Aisha joined them, and two adults, it took very little time to clear the room, set up the furniture and decorate. Billy had brought a poster he'd discovered of an artistic reconstruction of a Jurassic environment, Jason had brought a poster detailing the precise breakdown of movements in some type of karate spin kick, Zack a poster as well, this one of some pop music singer in very little clothing and Trini a photograph of all of them that looked like it had been created from archived footage from the viewing globe.

Kim surprised them all, producing a book of Native American folklore and myths of tribes from the California region. "What?" she asked defensively. "He's from an Indian tribe from somewhere around here, he just doesn't know which one. I thought he might like to have a connection or something."

Mrs. Park smiled at her. "That's wonderful of you, Kimberly," she said. "I know it doesn't often seem it, but the roots of our heritage can provide a sense of stability and belonging when all else fails."

"Or it can bore you to tears while you're waiting to get out of some interminable –" Adam started muttering to Billy.

His father shot him a sharp look. "Adam."

"Sorry, Dad," he said, as contrite as any teenager caught misbehaving.

His father raised an eyebrow at him but seemed to realise it was the best he was going to get and said to his wife, "We'll have to ask him about that. There may be some way to find out where he's really from."

The rest of the rangers didn't stay much longer. Billy sat with Aisha, both of them enjoying the entertainment derived from the interactions of his friends with the Parks. Adam's parents seemed to have decided that Trini was just the sort of nice girl they wanted Adam to get together with, sending Jason and Zack into an overprotective brotherly frenzy, Trini into retreat from the whole awkward scene and Kimberly cheerfully telling Trini it served her right for making fun of Kim's suffering whenever Jason and Zack did it to her. Eventually the others all left, picked up by Jason's father, and Adam stopped hiding behind the bushes.

"So," Aisha said to him once he'd emerged. "Now that you've been on the wrong end of it, are you gonna stop helping Rocky make my life hard?" She pointedly curled into Billy's side, which was exceedingly pleasant, and Billy tried very hard to avoid bringing Adam's attention onto himself.

Adam thought about it. "Probably not," he admitted. "Rocky's very good at freaking me out," he explained. "The next thing I know, I'm absolutely sure something bad's going to happen."

It was, perhaps, the most opportune moment he was going to get, Billy decided. As much as Trini was right about not hiding this advice from Tom, he also wanted to explain this without the need to constantly override Tom's protests on the veracity of his evaluations. "I actually wanted to talk to you a moment, Adam, about Tom."

Adam sat down and said, "This have something to do with his whole crappy parent foster care thing?"

"Yes," Billy said. "You know that he's been through so many schools, expulsions and moves that his education has been interrupted very frequently."

Perceptive, as he often was, Adam frowned. "The reason he keeps thinking he's stupid."

"Precisely," Billy said. "But it has been amplified by the fact that he's ceased putting in any effort into his schoolwork, convinced as he is that there is no purpose to doing so." Before Adam could say anything else, Billy went on. "I'm . . . concerned that he won't . . . understand the disciplinary boundaries of a normal family. He's never had them, only no boundaries or irrational and abusive ones. There may even be boundaries that are implicit that he will not realise are extant until he has run afoul of them."

He watched Adam's concentrating face throughout his speech. "I think I've got that," Adam said finally. "You think that, since he hasn't had normal parents or guardians that he won't know a whole bunch of things he's supposed to do or not do, just because he's not used to parents who care enough to ground you when you flunk a test."

"Yes," Billy said, relieved. "He may well run into those despite your best efforts, but if you could attempt to convince him to _do_ his homework, it will go a long way to keeping his grades reasonable." He then added, "And you may find some inexplicable behaviours on his part." He told Adam about the way Tom had borrowed the dinosaur text early into the days of their acquaintanceship, then Tom's reasons for having done so.

When he was finished, Adam leaned back. "Wow. Okay. So, he may do something that looks really really bad, but there's a good chance it'll be like his bully vendetta," he said. "I'll . . . see what I can do about that."

"One other thing," Billy said. "Trini said I ought to do this with Tom present. While I disagree, if only because we might have spent far too long in discussing the validity of my observations, I do intend to tell Tom that I have spoken to you about this."

Aisha, who had been silent through the whole discussion nodded. "You don't want him to find out and think that you're doing things behind his back or something," she said.

"Precisely," Billy said to her with a smile. It was strange in some ways that he should feel so comfortable with Adam, Aisha and Rocky. Sometimes it was almost as though they'd been his friends as long as he'd been friends with Trini and the others.

"All right, kids," Mrs. Park said. "Time to pack it in."

Billy had taken the RADBUG out as he usually did, enjoying the fact that he had his own transportation. Unfortunately he couldn't exactly tell Adam and Aisha that he had a flying VW Beetle that he'd take home. So, he said, "Why don't I walk you home, Aisha? I'll call from here to have my father pick me up there."

He pretended to dial home, keeping a finger subtly on the receiver button the whole time, faking a conversation. Then Aisha put an arm through his and half dragged him out the door.

"I'm telling Rocky," Adam said with an amused grin as they left.

With the technology he'd borrowed from the Command Centre, it was easy enough to set the remote control to fly the car over to Aisha's. Once on her doorstep, she glanced over, apparently checking to be certain no one was looking, then she kissed him. It was sublime.

"Aisha and Billy, sitting in a tree! K-I-S-S-I-N-G!" came the voice of Aisha's younger brother Jamal.

She pulled away and turned, chasing her sibling into the house. "You little cretin!"

"Goodbye Aisha!" Billy called.

"I'll see you when I get out of prison for _killing my brother!_" she called back.

Just as well, since it meant no one saw him climb into the driver's seat of the bug and fly off.


	7. Revelations

Disclaimer: Good heavens no, I own none of this. I'd be a lot richer if I did.

Notes: Oh, look at that. Action. And dialogue taken completely from episodes. Which dialogue I also take no credit for.

* * *

Tom really wasn't sure what he expected when he met Adam's parents. It wasn't this, though.

"I do realise you probably haven't had anyone to teach you these things, but try to keep your elbows off the table."

"We weren't sure how to decorate your room, so it's been left mostly clear, except for a few things your friends left for you. We can talk about paint colours and wallpaper once you've settled in a little."

"I've seen your grades, and while the upward trend once you arrived at Angel Grove is encouraging, we really do expect you to try harder."

"Don't worry about carrying your bags, you're hurt. The doctor said you've got a sprain in your shoulder, and that is a nasty cut."

By the time they got back to Stone Canyon, the one thing Tom was sure of was that he was fairly certain Adam's parents had to be bipolar or schizophrenic or something involving split personalities. It seemed every time he turned around there was something new he was doing wrong and something else he didn't need to worry about that made him either feel like they were babying him or made him wonder why anyone would bring it up.

There was some sort of welcome home party the moment they made it to the Park home, but Tom snuck out as fast as he could, scrambling into a tree in the back yard where no one could find him, he hoped. When he saw Billy outside, though, he leaned out of the tree, hissing, "Billy!"

"Tom?" Billy looked around, then up at Tom. "Why have you concealed yourself there?"

Tom leaned down further, lying on the branch. "It's weird in there," he admitted. "I don't know if they hate me or what. They keep telling me I shouldn't put my elbows on the table, and then they're acting all weird about my shoulder and stuff."

"Define weird," Billy requested. "And would you consider coming down? It is rather disconcerting to have this conversation with you in this manner."

"You could come up," Tom offered.

Billy eyed the tree a moment, and Tom sighed, swinging down and dropping from his branch. "Thank you," his friend said. "Now, what is strange in their interactions regarding your injuries?"

"They keep babying me," Tom complained. "I get it if they don't like me, people don't. But this thing where they're trying to pretend they like me after telling me everything I'm doing wrong is just . . . weird."

Hesitantly, Billy said, "I was concerned this might occur."

Tom looked at him sharply. "What might occur?"

"I spoke to Adam about the fact that you have not ever had proper parental guidance," Billy explained. "The fact that parents are supposed to both discipline and provide emotional support simultaneously is not something that is within the ambit of your experience."

He froze. "You're saying they're being normal?" he asked. "This . . . thing about manners and then acting like I'm not able to do things for myself is _normal_?"

"Well," Billy hedged. "No parent uses the same means of offering support and discipline, but I suspect they are attempting to treat you the same as they would Adam, were he to act similarly to you."

Tom stared. He hadn't known what this was, but he'd been planning to treat it as another version of the foster home thing. If they were going to try to act like he actually _was_ their kid . . . that would have to stop. "So . . . they're going to keep ragging on me about my elbows on the table and how I hold my fork-"

"And your grades in school, how you dress and expecting you to ensure they are aware at all times of your most probable location," Billy continued, nodding. "As I said, I spoke to Adam, and he will hopefully be aware enough to give you warning of pitfalls you might miss."

On the one hand, he resented the interference, but having someone to help him navigate these incredibly weird waters until he could hash out some way to deal with this would be invaluable. So, he suppressed the annoyance that Billy also thought he couldn't handle himself, and thanked his friend.

That night, after being warned by Adam that they were expected to get up the next morning for a family breakfast every day, without fail, he lay awake for a while, figuring out what to do. With the depressingly early mornings, it was pretty clear that late nights weren't going to be in the offing until he was used to the mornings. Still, there _was_ something he could probably figure out come the next weekend.

Until then, he'd play along. Well, he'd keep his head down and try to act like the Parks. So, he got dressed and did his best to imitate their creepily perfect table manners. He hadn't thought people outside of movies actually ate like that. They all held they forks in that same graceful manner, somehow magically managed to cut the bacon and spear it without mauling it on the plate, no one used their fingers for anything and it was all Tom could do not to stare.

He let the conversation flow around him, not wanting to get involved in something he'd probably mess up if he said anything, and was brought out of his heavy concentration on figuring out the mechanics of bacon and fork by Mrs. Park asking him something. He had no idea what, having assumed they'd ignore him. Why he'd assumed that he didn't know, but he was caught off guard and said, "What?"

Adam winced. Tom suppressed a wince, because this meant he'd just stepped into some minefield or other. "I beg your pardon," said Mrs. Park. It wasn't a question, based on her tone of voice, though. It was information. Apparently. What that information was, Tom had no idea.

"What?" he repeated, now just confused.

Adam rescued him. "Mom means that you're supposed to say, 'I beg your pardon,' not 'What,' when you're asking, 'What did you just say?'."

"Oh," Tom blinked. That was . . . pointless. Why wouldn't you just ask that?

"Adam," Mrs. Park said reprovingly.

Her son held his ground. "He had no idea what you meant, Mom," he said to her. "It was either going to turn into an Abbot and Costello routine, or you were going to ground him for disrespect and he'd never have known why, either."

It slipped out before he realised he was saying it. "Billy was right, I really _don't_ know what's going on."

The elder Parks exchanged glances, while Adam said, "When Mom responds to a question like that, it usually means she's saying you're supposed to ask her in the way she asked, rather than in the way _you_ asked."

"Oh," Tom repeated. "Okay then." Realising he might have to add something, hoping he picked the right thing, looked at Adam's mom and said, "Sorry."

She nodded slowly, her eyes evaluating him. It was a very uncomfortable feeling. "I asked you if you'd like a ride out to Angel Grove to see your friends," she said.

Trying to stay pleasant, he said, "No, thanks."

Now Adam was looking at him funny. What had he said now? "You're not going to see Billy and the rest?" Adam asked him.

"Yeah, I am," Tom answered, slowly, looking for clues as to what he'd said wrong now. "Why would I need a ride?" he asked. At this rate he was never getting out of this conversation. "We're pretty close to the bus terminal and the next one leaves in forty-five minutes."

"You can't think we're just going to give you money before we've even determined your allowance," Mr. Park told him, looking a little angry.

This whole situation was completely baffling and Tom's tolerance for it ran out. "I'm not asking you for money," he said, clinging to control of his temper. "I'm perfectly capable of making myself enough money for a damn bus fare. I _have_ the money for bus fare and I really don't see what my going to Angel Grove has to do with you."

He'd made it a habit to always be ready to go once he was up and dressed, saving him time in terms of getting out of bad situations. Tom headed out to the terminal and caught the next bus that took him close to Angel Grove, rather than to a half block from the youth centre. He'd wind up later than he'd like catching up with everyone else, but you never knew about people and whether or not they'd chase after you.

The bus ride let him cool down and the walk to the youth centre did the trick for the rest. "Tom!" Kimberly greeted him happily. Then she shot a significant look at Jason and Zack and kissed him.

"Wow," he told her, smiling. Then, looking at the Rangers' fearless leader and said leader's best friend, he told her, "Please don't make me a pawn in some fight you're having with Jason and Zack. They'll double-team me, and I don't think any of us wants to be maimed today."

Once settled at the table, Trini asked, "So, how's it going with the Parks?"

Tom sighed. "Probably not so good. It started with Adam having to translate his mom to me and me to his mom, and then she asked whether I wanted a ride out here." He shook his head over the whole debacle. "I don't even get it, but from the way Adam was looking at me, I think this may have been one of those normal family things that Billy says I don't get."

Trini and Billy exchanged heavy looks and Trini said, "I'm sure you can work it out, what happened?"

"Well, when I told Mrs. Park that I didn't want a ride here, she and Adam and Adam's dad were all, 'You're not going to see your friends?' and when I said I was taking the bus, Mr. Park got angry," Tom said, baffled all over again. "He thought I was expecting him to pay for my bus fare. Why would I expect him to pay for my bus fare?" he asked them.

Looks were exchanged, then Kimberly said, "'Cause that's what parents do? I mean, part of it? Pay for stuff?"

"But," Tom objected, "Adam's got a job teaching ninjutsu, there's no reason for them to pay his transit costs."

More looks, then Billy said reasonably, "But you don't have a means of support that they are aware of. Most likely they would expect you to be without your own income."

"Where did they think my clothes came from?" Tom asked, "The clothes fairy?"

"Didn't your foster families pay for them?" Kimberly asked in response. "I mean, they're paid so they can take care of the kids they get."

"Really?" Tom shrugged. "I mean, I knew they were paid, but most of the ones I stayed in treated it as compensation for putting up with us."

"Mrs. Lewis," Kimberly started.

That had been weird, but there was a reason he could see there. "I think she thought you dragging me shopping was funny, frankly," he told Kimberly. "She asked for a play-by-play later. Schadenfreude, I think it's called," he said.

"Schad – what?" Zack asked.

"A concept borrowed from German," Tom explained. "It means taking joy in other people's misfortune. Like when Kim was laughing at Trini yesterday when Adam's parents were trying to throw Adam at her."

"There's a word for that?" Jason asked.

Tom shrugged. "A German word, anyhow."

"How do you know that?" Zack asked.

Laughing a little, because like a lot of weird things he knew it didn't exactly come from normal book learning, Tom explained. "One time when I got expelled, the principal dragged me into her office for a lecture before dropping the hammer. I got treated to being accused of moral turpitude, schadenfreude, hebetude and a bunch of other gems I didn't remember long enough to look up later."

"Turpitude?"

"Moral turpitude means an act of vileness contrary to the standards and good of the community," Trini said. "I can see how it would come up. I hadn't heard of hebetude, though."

Nodding, Tom said, "Yeah, that one wasn't in the regular dictionaries. I had to go to the big ones. It means . . ." he thought back. "Slow-witted, if I remember right. Basically she was calling me a stupid thug who enjoyed seeing other people hurt." The story amused him these days, mostly because the idea of using words to yell at someone when they couldn't understand them sort of defeated the point of yelling at a person.

He was the only one who was amused.

"Hey, come on, it's funny. Yelling at the dumb kid but not using any words he could understand. It's kind of ironically stupid," he said.

"Is there ironic stupidity in turning down a free ride?" Adam asked dryly from behind him.

When he turned, Adam's parents were hovering uncertainly in the doorway of the youth centre and Adam had fixed Tom with a glare that meant business. "I don't know," Tom said. "Your mom said she had to head out to shop for garden supplies, and the nearest place with any decent ones is in the complete opposite direction from Angel Grove. It'd be taking her out of her way. I figured I wouldn't inconvenience her and come here by myself."

"Excuse us," Adam said, levering Tom out of his chair. "We need to talk."

Hustled out of the youth centre, Tom was treated to an impressive lecture on politeness, not walking out on people in the middle of a discussion and a confusingly sympathetic explanation that, as they were responsible for him, that meant the Parks were supposed to pay for things like clothes, food, educational activities and transportation.

After a week of having to do all his class readings and homework the moment he got home, listening to the unsurprising, "We'll be watching you," speech from the Stone Canyon High School principal and desperately trying to understand what the boundaries were and weren't at the Parks', Tom was losing it. He snuck off after the mandatory family time breakfast that Saturday and headed straight for a bar where he set up to do some pool sharking.

A couple hundred in and he looked up from the shot he was lining up to see Rocky, Adam, Aisha and Billy all gingerly walking into the bar. He groaned inwardly and hoped they wouldn't spot him until he'd cleaned up his current game. The rest went off cleanly and he collected the bet money with his carefully artless, "I'm just lucky, I guess," smile. Then he carefully ambled around the room until he came up on his four friends. "Hey," he said.

"What are you doing here?" demanded Adam.

"Money," Tom answered, showing him the collection of cash. He gave Rocky a sheepish smile. "I may have been a little much when I said I liked the cage fighting."

"Oh, well, that makes everything okay," Aisha said, sarcasm dripping off every word.

Billy didn't say anything, just went wide-eyed and backed up a step at something he saw behind Tom. When he turned, the men he'd just won money off of were approaching like an oncoming thunderstorm. "Great," Tom said with a sigh. "Look, why don't you guys wait outside, I'll deal with this and catch you up."

Looking at him searchingly, Billy nodded and said, "I'll see if the first aid kit in the bug is still fully stocked."

"Probably should, kid," said the man in the lead. Then he turned to Tom. "Thought you could scam us, didja?"

"I won that game," Tom said back. "I let you break and I never said I didn't know how to play or was bad at it."

The man was almost growling as he said, "How about I give you a break?" Then he dove in.

Rocky, Adam and Aisha were all good enough at their martial art that they could adapt to barroom brawl reasonably well. But that wasn't who Tom was watching with a half-pleased smile on his face whenever he could as the fight continued, then spilled out into the parking lot.

It was Billy. Billy, who had barely had the instinct to duck out of the way of a flying fist when Tom first met him, used a bar stool to great effect, then wove and twisted away from his attackers, coming after them with some beautifully brutal elbow movements clipping their opponents in the face or gut. It wasn't pretty like what the trio beside them were doing, but it worked.

When the fight was over, Tom was back to back with Billy, feeling Blue watching his back, and with the other three there it was almost like fighting with the team again. Then he turned and saw the three bruised and disapproving faces of the trio, and the look on Billy's face was . . . he wasn't sure. His grin dropped away and he sighed. There was nothing for it at this point, and he decided to just face the music. Still, before Billy got into the driver's seat, Tom said to him, "You did great, you know."

A trace of a smile flickered on Billy's face, and he replied, "Thanks."

Back in Stone Canyon Adam dragged Tom into the house and practically threw him onto the bed in his room. "What the hell was that?" Adam demanded. "Are you trying to get yourself killed? Are you suicidal? Is that it?"

"What? No!" Tom denied. "Where would you get suicidal from that?"

"You were outnumbered seven to one," Adam reminded him, "And you tried to send us away. Billy seemed to think this was normal for you. What is wrong with – Ah!" He hissed as the adrenaline was clearly wearing off and the hits he'd taken made themselves known.

Looking him up and down, Tom sighed. "Sit down, take off your shirt. Looks like you hit something sharp somewhere along the way. I'm going to get some ice and stuff."

The cut from what was probably the remains of a broken bottle on the parking lot asphalt looked worse than it actually was, and Tom easily cleaned it up, working around Adam's fidgeting and bandaged it up. Once Adam was back in a clean, not torn shirt, holding ice to his face, he said, "Just . . . explain this to me, okay? Because I get that Billy said you'd do things that only make sense in your head, but . . . why?"

"Why . . . Oh, my God! Adam! What happened?" Mrs. Park was instantly patting her son down, eyes wide. "Did you get attacked when you went to find Tom?"

"It was my fault," Tom said. "Really, I shouldn't have dragged Adam with me, he tried to talk me out of it, but I insisted." He would have elbowed Adam to stop looking like that, because he'd never make it as any sort of decent liar if he couldn't keep a poker face, but there was no subtle way to do it right then, so he just hoped the Parks would believe him. Especially if he played up that he was a bad influence. They should believe that. "I thought he could use some loosening up. I guess I just didn't realise how uncomfortable he'd be with my hustling pool." He shrugged. "He's too honest, I guess. When he realised I was running a con he told them. Next thing I know we're in a bar fight."

Adam's dad shot him a sharp, considering look. "Why were you hustling pool?" he asked.

Tom blinked. This was normally the part where people called him a bad influence and threatened to call the police or juvie or something. He also thought the answer was obvious. "Money."

"Why do you need money?" asked Mr. Park. "What in particular?" he clarified. "Because as our ward you already have free room and board, we'll be covering any educational expenses you need as well as clothing and any entertainment, within reason." The man's head cocked, and it was like he was reading Tom's mind when he said, "Maybe we've gone about this in the wrong way. Because I'm getting the sense you feel indebted to us, and you don't like it." He frowned at Tom. "In the homes you were in before, the previous foster care placements, who paid for your meals?"

"I did," Tom answered, wondering what bizarre thing would crop up now. "I mean, you could usually trust there to be something once a day, but it was usually just dinner. It's easiest to fake out someone checking up on things with dinner. And there's free school breakfasts, y'know, those free breakfast for poor kids programs, and ends and things you can cadge off the cafeteria ladies after lunch and snacks when you volunteer some places."

Mrs. Park looked disturbed, but her husband held up a hand to stop her. "What about your clothes? You had to buy them too?"

"Yeah," Tom said. "Well, there wwas a lot of church lost and founds and charity and stuff. And I could usually rely on the cash from the foster home for something I _really_ needed, like a winter coat last year. I suppose it's a good thing Mrs. Lewis decided on her little exercise in schadenfreude, I've got some nice clothes now that I didn't have to pay for."

"I assume you had to pay for your own transportation too."

This was getting weird, and Tom, desperate for a reaction that he could see as normal, threw in with deliberate casualness, "Unless I borrowed someone's car without permission."

Adam's reaction was priceless. "You don't even have a licence, do you?"

"Of course not," Tom said, rolling his eyes. "But fake ID works on alcohol spot checks and I've never gotten caught speeding . . . well, that one time, but someone had to get Christy to the hospital. She was freaking out the whole time about having a baby in a car."

Adam goggled, but both his parents were now getting in on this analysis thing. "I thought you were trying to be helpful," said Mrs. Park, "But you did your laundry because you didn't think anyone else would, didn't you?"

"I-"

"And I'd wondered what happened in my sewing kit, a few things were moved around, but . . ." she eyed his shirt, "That's a very neat job you've done, there."

"Uh . . . thanks?" Tom said, now utterly confused. It was happening too much lately. He didn't like it.

She smiled. "I can hardly complain about not having _another_ person's clothes to wash. And the fact that you actually cleaned up after breakfast without being asked," she shot Adam a look that made him flush, "Unlike some people, is very much appreciated."

"What I think you don't realise, Tom, is that we're legally obligated to pay for your needs now," Mr. Park told him. "It doesn't mean you owe us anything, nor does it mean we see you as incapable. There are some things every child . . . young person," he corrected when Tom winced at the word, "Should have. That includes an adult to give them a roof over their head and decent meals and clothes." He shot Tom a serious look. "That also includes discipline, such as punishment when you do things you shouldn't, like getting my son caught up in a bar fight."

"If I offer to pay rent for the room and for my own food," Tom suggested, "We could skip that."

"I wouldn't accept the offer," Mr. Park said seriously.

What followed was hours of negotiation about what he could be expected to do or not. Not wanting to have any more invasive searches in his life than necessary, Tom easily volunteered to keep doing his own laundry, balked at extracurriculars but gave in when it was 'suggested' he take on extra cleaning chores instead and wound up faced with etiquette lessons from Adam's mom. He was also told to stop calling them Mr. and Mrs. Park. They were Ada and Graham.

Tom tried several more times while they negotiated to get them to be normal. After his third attempt at dropping some terrible habit he had or nogoodnik action he'd committed into the conversation, he was informed that they were onto him, and to stop doing that. In response, Tom snapped, "Then stop acting like this. It's weird and I can't cope if the only person who's acting normal is the school principal."

"Define normal," Graham said, sounding tired.

"Warning me if I set a foot out of line I'll be expelled," Tom replied. "Really, I know it's inevitable and so does everyone else. Why don't you just make it easy and stop trying so hard?"

Instead of agreeing or anything Tom could deal with, Ada actually got offended. "He said what? I'll bring it up at the next PTA meeting," she half snarled. "How dare he?"

"How dare he tell the kid with a history of violence and repeated expulsions that they don't want him beating up the students?" Tom asked. "Really? I know _I'd_ warn me."

"It's very unsupportive, and after we met with him to be sure he understood you needed a fresh start, he should have avoided anything like that," Ada said sharply.

He stared at her. "Supportive? That's for kids who need support," he said, baffled. "I need to graduate so I can get on with flipping burgers."

Graham shot a look at his wife. "Well, so much for the therapist's evaluation that he had too high an opinion of himself."

The negotiations started up again.

After everyone getting onto the same page, at least in practical terms, because Tom still didn't get anything that was going on, life settled into a sort of routine. School, extracurriculars, hanging with Adam's friends and with Billy whenever he could, watching every Power Rangers fight with his heart in his throat because he _just couldn't help_.

Adam, Rocky and Aisha didn't and couldn't understand why he had such an obsession, but they tolerated the way he'd stress in the aftermath of a battle and wouldn't stop until he'd gotten on the communicator or the phone with Billy and Kim.

Then one day, while the Parks were out Adam was trying to keep Tom from wearing himself out pacing in front of the TV, the two worlds collided. Adam had called Rocky and Aisha in as reinforcements, heading out to answer the door for a moment. Tom was alone in the room, felt the teleportation begin to take hold, and saw the shocked looks on the trio's faces as he vanished into the green beam of light.

In the Command Centre he forgot all about Adam, Aisha and Rocky. Kimberly half threw herself at him. "Tom!" Hugging her back he saw the others all looked worse for wear.

"Welcome back," Jason said, then put the powerless green coin into Tom's hand.

Something was very wrong. "What happened?" he demanded. Kim's bare arms were bruised, and despite the protection of the helmets, Trini and Billy were both suffering from some nasty bruising on their faces. Jason and Zack didn't look hurt, but Jason was hiding a limp and Zack kept rolling his shoulders as though trying to ease an ache in his back where he'd been slammed into something.

"Rita," Kim answered, refusing to let him go. "She took our parents, everyone at the Parent-Teacher day, and she's stuck them into a dark dimension."

"She threatened permanent harm," Billy added, "Unless we gave up our power coins to her."

Jason was angry. "How could we have been so _stupid_?" he snapped to no one in particular. "It's not like we could expect her to keep her word."

Knowing perfectly well that he would have done the same for Billy or the others in a heartbeat, Tom said, "It's not like she wasn't going to enslave them or worse," he reminded Jason. "At least she hasn't yet."

"I know," Jason said. "I just . . ."

"I get it," he said. "And I'll do anything I can to help, but how? How can I without my powers?"

Zordon spoke, finally. "I believe the only way possible is to infuse Tom with an enormous amount of my own energy."

"But Zordon," Billy pulled himself up and stared in concern at their mentor. "That could be extremely dangerous for both you and Tom."

That didn't even register on Tom's radar. His friends needed his help. It was that simple. Jason was less sure. "I agree with Billy," he said. "What happens if these temporary powers give out during a fight?"

"Then they give out," Tom said. "I don't really want to be out there without the protection, but Angel Grove needs the Power Rangers."

"We can't ask you to take that risk," Kimberly said. "I don't want you taking that risk."

"This is a risk I'm willing to take," Tom said to her. The thought of Kim, who always knew what to say, better even than Billy, being at Rita's mercy, it galvanised him. The thought of Billy, who was only just developing into a style of combat all his own, without the help of his Power Coin to make up the difference, left him sick. The thought of Jason, Zack and Trini, who'd each accepted him in their own way, even after he'd done nothing to earn their trust besides run around in green spandex, being attacked by Rita as they surely would be because she was just that petty, left him with no doubt about what he had to do.

"When do we begin?" he asked Zordon.

There were preparations to be made, connections with the computers, various pieces of hardware that he didn't understand in the slightest, but he let Billy explain because it soothed his friend to talk through the technicals.

Then everything was set and Tom held out the coin, seeing lightning be emitted by the bowed head of Zordon. The initial flush of power was incredible, but it soon started to buzz, then sting. Zordon's powers were not fully compatible with the coin. While he was, in a lot of ways, one with the Morphing Grid, Zordon could not fully tune to the coin, and Tom got the impression that this was also slightly out of synch, in that Zordon wasn't Green either, he was some other Ranger colour and he was having to find a way to adjust to that, as well.

Dimly he heard someone say, "Amazing," but he couldn't tell who through the vague haze of pain and power that he was enveloped in. He tried to let his team mates' voices ground him.

"I just hope this works." One of the girls. Trini?

"Zordon! Be careful! If you drain too much of your energy you'll cease to exist." Billy. Couldn't be anyone else.

There wasn't anything he could latch onto in order to take in anything but a few small sounds and feelings that slipped through the gaps. He couldn't even really feel the floor under his feet anymore. Alpha was worrying, but it was fading into the background.

"Rangers. It's our only chance." Zordon's voice sounded strange, coming as it did through the energy he was donating to the coin. "You worry too much Al-"

Zordon's voice cut out partway through the word.

"Please let this happen." Kim now? It was so hard to focus.

"I don't believe it." As Zack spoke, the energy stopped skirling around him and suddenly gained a focus, letting Tom regain enough focus to see something that wasn't green.

Jason's relieved voice was next. "It's working."

The power flickered, once, twice, three times, then snapped into focus. He was morphed again. That sense that he could do anything, defeat any monster thrown at him washed over Tom's consciousness. It felt like home. Like the promise of being able to protect anyone from anything. "This is amazing," he breathed. "I'm back."

There wasn't time to enjoy the feeling though, and he was teleported out to where Goldar was holding the power coins in order to get them back. "You again, Green Weakling?" demanded the monkey.

Having another crack at the monkey was also worth the risk, he thought as he replied, "That's right, Goldar."

Goldar laughed, saying, "You have no chance of defeating me!"

Did the guy always talk like a hack Saturday morning cartoon villain? Tom wondered. It dragged everyone's responses down with him. "We'll see about that," he called back. What else could you say in response to something like that?

"Empty threats from a powerless ranger," Goldar taunted back.

"I have more than enough to beat you, Goldar," he said, wondering when the fight would begin.

Goldar just had to have the last word. He even used 'shall'. "I shall enjoy crushing you again!" he postured, before leaping down to start the fight . . . no, to keep posturing. "You've come for your precious Dragon Dagger and your pathetic power coins." He slammed the box holding them closed. "Come and get them," the monkey said.

This was it. "Right. Just you and me, Goldar," Tom postured right back, edging his way closer. The less space between him and the little column thing, the better a chance he had at getting them back.

And Goldar cheated. Because that was what he did. "Putty patrol, take care of my old friend, there."

Damn putties. They were just such a nuisance when you were in morph. Sure they were a danger out of morph, and the rules of never escalating meant that Tom hardly ever had to fight putties when morphed, but they were just annoying. You had to wade through the things, shattering them, and it took up time that he didn't have to waste.

Closing with Goldar, he managed to exchange a few blows, but the power of the coin was weaker than it had been and he was out of practice. Squat and Baboo meebling on off to the side, like the peanut gallery or something just made him grind his teeth. "Had enough already?" Goldar taunted again from where he'd sent Tom reeling into the ground. Tom forced himself to see Goldar as just another bully. Just another jerk he had to deal with, work through the pain of the fight and keep on going. He didn't bother to reply this time, pulling himself to his feet.

He could feel the power fluctuating. He had to get past Goldar now. Years of being beaten by kids bigger and older than him until he'd finally learned how to really fight back, more years of getting into fights in bars and cage matches while on the run and desperate for money had taught him how to get up no matter how hard it was. A brutal elbow to the face, slamming Goldar with rocks and anything else that came to hand, it wasn't graceful, but it worked. He staggered the last few feet and got his hands on the Dragon Dagger, only to get flung back by some sort of energy surge.

Why he hadn't expected a force field was beyond him. Still, he had it. "I got it! The Dragon Dagger!" With a sense of relief, he played the strange flute, regaining control of his zord.

Naturally Rita had to send out a giant-sized Goldar and . . . how exactly _did_ Scorpina turn from a sexy hot thing into whatever the heck that was?

The pair fought the giant robot, until suddenly they vanished. That was when Tom turned his attention back to the coins. But he'd used up so much energy on controlling the zord that he felt his morph slipping away. Those last few staggering steps, feeling power draining out of him so fast it was like water through a sieve, and he had his hands on the box.

He also had the feeling of being somehow electrocuted, teleported, and then everything went black.

It was the weirdest thing. He'd passed out before, from beatings, from exhaustion. He'd never come to standing up.

"Tom!" Alpha exclaimed. "You're back! And the energy from the force field has restored your powers!"

"How do you feel, Tom?" Zordon asked.

That was when he noticed no one was there. It meant they were out somewhere fighting something. It was one thing he'd learned from before, the team never left the Command Centre when one of their own was too hurt to leave. Unless there was an attack they had to push back. "Right now, I'm pissed," he said. "Billy and Kim and the others are in danger and I'm up here."

Silently, Alpha held out the coin. _The energy from the force field restored your powers_. "I'm morphing out of here," he informed them. He didn't wait for a response, either. "Dragonzord!"

He may have overdone his entrance, but it felt awesome to be able to step between the others and the . . . aardvark-mole . . . really? What did Finster take in his spare time? It had to be some pretty powerful 'shrooms or something.

Red and Yellow were attacking Pink, who was being pinned by Blue and Black. With his little pyrotechnic display, Tom saw some sort of energy fields lift off them, making the four under the influence stagger a little. "I am so glad to see you," Kim said, a hand on his arm.

"It's good to be back," he told her.

When Rita made her aardvark-mole thing grow, he backed them up with the Dragonzord, wondering like always what it was like to be part of the team in the cockpit of the zord instead of on the ground using the Dragon Dagger like a shepherd whistling at his sheepdog to move the sheep into a pen. The Dragonzord had a mind of its own, and Tom often talked to it because it seemed to understand him, something the others didn't understand at times. Their zords didn't think, theirs were just big robots.

He'd discussed it with Zordon, the little differences between him and the other rangers that added up, Sixth, Rita's spells and being the wrong colour. But right here and now, even as he was separated from them, Zordon's words about being a Sixth Ranger always applying, he was still a part of them. It was more than enough.

When they finally got the thing to blow up, they all headed back, greeted by Zordon saying the others' parents were back safe and didn't remember anything. "That's the best news I've heard all day," Billy said.

"Second best news is that Tom's back," Jason said, clapping him on the back.

Even Zordon's words that the powers were most likely temporary couldn't mute the happiness at being back, being part of something that was so much _more_ than himself. Most of all, the reason and excuse to be around his closest friends, and his girlfriend, made him grin. Zack's eyes suddenly went wide. "Hey guys, it's parents day, remember?"

The team split up. The five heading back to the youth centre, Tom, back to the Parks'. Appearing in his room, there was a momentary pause, then suddenly Aisha, Adam and Rocky burst through the door. "Why didn't you tell us you're a Power Ranger?" demanded Adam.

Oh, right. He'd been teleported away in front of them.

When in doubt, bluff. "Why would you think I'm a Power Ranger?" he asked. Maybe he could still fake a kidnapping.

"First," Adam said, "You and Billy, Kim, Zack, Jason and Trini all disappear at the same time, all the time. While you guys are gone, the Power Rangers will show up in Angel Grove to fight a monster."

"So . . . because we've got a-"

"Let the boy finish," interrupted Aisha.

Actually, that might have been better, because he had no idea what he and the others would have to do.

"The way you've been freaking every time the Power Rangers are out lately makes sense if it's your best friends, and the Green Ranger's been missing in action for weeks."

Rocky continued. "You guys always wear the same colours. It's weird. I mean, you've been wearing less green lately, but the others? I was getting pretty sure it's OCD. And the colours match the Power Rangers."

"The fighting styles," added Adam. "People who don't know you guys might not realise, but the Red Ranger moves like Jason, Zack's hip hop aikido is really distinctive-"

Aisha cut in now. "I was at the mall with Kim one time and we got attacked by putties. Right before she vanished on me with a lame excuse I got to watch her fight. All that backflippy stuff the Pink Ranger does? That's totally Kim."

"The Green Ranger started out favouring karate," Adam said, eyeing Tom intently, "But he's shifted over to ninjutsu. But when he gets cornered," a hard look, "When he gets cornered he does something that looks a lot like what I saw in a parking lot in front of a bar a couple weeks ago."

"None of that's proof," Tom tried.

"You haven't denied it," Rocky said. "And just now we saw you get sucked away in a green beam of light. Not to mention the funny matching watches that all beep at the same time _every time_ there's a monster attack."

"When we first met Billy he said that you'd been kidnapped by Rita Repulsa," Aisha put in. "Why would she kidnap some random kid?"

"I . . . uh . . ." backed into a corner and not able to think of a good lie, because those were all really good points, Tom panicked, shoved them all out of his room, slamming the door behind him. Then he beeped Billy.

"Is something wrong Tom?"

"Well, with everything that happened I kinda forgot that Adam, Aisha and Rocky walked in on me just as Zordon teleported me out," Tom explained. "And they've kinda figured out we're the Power Rangers. What's the policy on that?"

"They what?" Jason was on the communicator. "How?"

"Because we always vanish when there's a monster attack, the communicators go off before anyone else is aware of the monster attack, our fighting styles, Aisha got attacked by putties with Kim at the mall one time and you _know_ Kim's fighting style is the most distinctive out of all of us, noticing how much I freak when I see you guys fighting and I'm not there to help-"

"I get it," Jason said grimly. "We'll call Zordon and get back to you."

Opening the door, all three were standing in front of it with identical stances, arms crossed and looking extremely sceptical. "Subtle that was not," Aisha told him.

"There's . . . I . . . uh . . ."

There was a long silence.

Suddenly they were all in teleportation beams, hurtling towards the Command Centre.


	8. Telling Tales

Disclaimer: Good heavens no, I own none of this. I'd be a lot richer if I did.

Notes: Almost at the end of this little experiment.

* * *

Billy stood in the Command Centre, watching in worry as Alpha teleported Aisha, Rocky and Adam to them. They'd all had close calls, but it was the first time someone had put all the pieces together, with the added evidence that you could match a fighting style to a person if you watched.

When they arrived, one red, one black and one yellow beam accompanying Tom's green, the three from Stone Canyon fell over, just like the team had in their first teleportation. Billy hurried over and pulled Aisha up. He turned to help the other two, but Tom had already pulled Adam up and Jason was getting Rocky to his feet as well.

"Whoa," said Rocky looking around the Command Centre. "This is . . . wow."

"Welcome, Rocky, Adam, Aisha," said Zordon.

The three spun around. "Whoa," Aisha said this time. Unsure if she'd appreciate it or not, Billy hesitantly wrapped an arm around her shoulders. She smiled at him, seemingly grateful.

Tom meanwhile was looking miserable. "I screwed up," he said. "I should have remembered-"

Billy felt a smile tug on his lips as the rest of the team snorted in unison. "You? Remember?" Zack asked.

"Really, Tom. Sometimes I think it's luck that you remember your own name," Jason teased as well.

Calming down a little, Tom rolled his eyes. "Very funny. The point is, I saw them just as I got teleported. I should have said something so there'd be an excuse when I got back."

"It is not the disaster that you think it is," Zordon reassured them. "Rocky, Adam and Aisha have shown themselves to be both honourable and good friends to you all."

"This is amazing," Rocky murmured.

Aisha shot him a look. "Shh! Rocky, let the man talk." She tilted her head a little, saying, "I think he's a man."

Adam just looked sincerely flummoxed.

"It is imperative that the information of the Rangers' identities remain a secret. Alpha has conducted an analysis of your background and has determined that you are model citizens," despite the gravity of the moment, Aisha and Adam both looked at Rocky and simultaneously stifled laughs. "You have shown yourselves to be loyal, fair and most important, trustworthy. Therefore, we ask that you take a solemn vow, never to reveal the true identities of the Power Rangers."

And so they did, and then Alpha returned Tom, Billy and the trio to Adam's house. The first words since the vow were said by Rocky. "Okay, so the one thing that's killing me here," he said, "Is Billy. How come, if you're so awesome a fighter, you need to take classes with us?"

"I'm not," Billy said. "You see, one of the things the Power gives you is the ability to fight once you've morphed." He smiled in reminiscence. "I will never forget how strange it was the first time. I had been thoroughly discommoded and disabled by the putties as myself. Once we morphed, it was as though I had been taking lessons in some sort of martial art all my life. It came to me as easily as mathematics does. Once the time in the uniform ended, I no longer had access to that information."

"Weird," Rocky said. He turned to Tom. "So, did it stick that martial arts stuff into your head too?"

Tom nodded pensively. "I'd favoured karate before, and I think it borrowed the skill set from Jason."

Billy's head came up. Tom had never said anything like that. "What do you mean?"

"Well, the actual skills at fighting have to come from _somewhere_," Tom explained. "I mean, the ones the Grid has given to you, me and Kim. It's more than just a power source, you know? It seems to have the complete knowledge base of everyone who's ever been a ranger before us. I talked to Zordon and he says that's how we all know how to drive the zords and things. The information is only accessed if we need it. I needed to know how to deal with Jason on his own terms when I was evil, so I was able to get that information out of the Grid. You needed to fight, so the Grid gave you the knowledge of some sort of martial art to handle it. Zordon said it's an Eltarian discipline, something one of his team mates used."

"Zordon's team mates?" he asked.

"Didn't you know?" Tom asked back. "I asked him about why he was where he is and stuff. He said he used to be a Power Ranger, 10,000 years ago, and that he got trapped in that dimensional vortex being a ranger."

He hadn't known. "Have you spent a preponderance of time discussing this with him?" Billy asked.

A wry smile. "When I was avoiding you guys back at the start, y'know, when I thought you all would hate me for the whole . . . evil thing." Then Tom looked a little tired. "My connection to the Power isn't the same as the rest of the team's. I'm not supposed to be the Green Ranger-"

"That's ridiculous," Adam said. "You protect people and you're good at it."

Tom laughed. "This is straight from Zordon. He said that, even if I was a proper Ranger, I shouldn't be Green. Different colours attach to different personalities, and I'm not a Green personality, whatever that means." He shrugged. "I talk to Zordon sometimes because I . . . there are things I can feel about being a Ranger that you guys don't seem to," he explained. "I needed to know why. Rita did something to me," he finished.

"Oh," Adam said. It was about all that could be said. Then he clearly turned it all over in his head. "Okay, so why haven't you been doing the whole Ranger thing lately?" he asked Tom.

That sobered them. "Rita took my powers," Tom explained. "In the end I had to give the extra powers of the coin to someone, Jason made the most sense, in order to keep her from taking them. My power coin was drained and I had no connection to the power anymore."

"That was when Tom began to follow me around at school, scaring off anyone who came within ten feet of me," Billy said wryly. "Without the ability to exercise his protective tendencies in battle, he . . . diverted those intentions elsewhere."

"No wonder you were a wreck," Rocky said to Tom.

"What happened today?" Aisha asked. "I mean, we saw on the news, you were back, right?"

Billy recalled those endless minutes in the Command Centre, watching Tom struggle against putties and Goldar, and fighting Scorpina and Goldar with the Dragonzord. It was terrifying and he'd felt sympathy for Tom, trapped at home with no way to help them, understanding the fear that might drive him to such bulldog extremes. "Our parents were taken captive today," he explained. Aisha promptly pulled him into a hug. He sighed and leaned against her, remembering the stark fear of the moment. "Everyone at the Parent Day at the youth centre, actually. We were told that if we didn't give Rita the power coins, she'd . . ." He trailed off, shivering a little. "We couldn't think of an alternative."

"Oh my God," Aisha said. "So . . . but if Tom's power was all gone, how did he manage to . . . morph, you said?"

"Yes," Billy replied. His eyes were flickering closed. He was tired. It had been such a long and stressful day, and he'd had to pretend to his father and everyone else that he was fine. "Zordon proposed to use his own energy to reenergise the Green coin. We nearly lost him." Still exhausted, he found himself burrowing further into Aisha. It was comfortable and comforting. "We nearly lost Tom, too."

"I wouldn't know," Tom said. His voice sounded distant. "I was unconscious for a while, I was told. I got overloaded getting the coins back. There was a force field . . ." The voice faded into an indistinct murmur.

Billy woke up hours later. His head was pillowed on Aisha's lap and she was gently petting his hair. "Back with us, Sleeping Beauty?" she asked.

"I would think Rip Van Winkle would be more appropriate," he answered, sitting up. "Unless you wish to imply something about my gender."

"But you're not a hundred years old," she said, "And you're pretty good-looking."

"Not like Jason or Zack," he replied. She was very close.

That made her smile. "As good as Jason and Zack," she told him firmly.

"You are most aesthetically pleasing as well," Billy told her. "I thought so the first time we met."

Aisha didn't say anything else, just kissed him. They had kissed before, of course, but for the first time she knew everything there was to know about him, and it felt . . . better. Like they could both trust something more about each other.

Things had begun to become rather heated when suddenly a familiar voice was clearing her throat behind him. "I'm not going to drive you back if you're in any sort of state," said Trini.

They bolted apart. "Trini?"

"Tom called. He said someone needed to get the RADBUG out here to pick you up before Adam's parents got back and wondered how you got here and why," Trini explained. "And since I'm the only person who knows how to fly that thing, I got voted to do it."

Billy sighed. "I suppose I really should teach Kimberly how to fly it," he said with a sigh. "I know you hate heights unmorphed."

"After what she did to her Dad's car?" Tom asked, laughing. "I vote no. I've seen her drive. It's terrifying."

Trini smiled at Billy gently. "Say goodbye to Aisha and let's get you home before we have to do a round robin to keep your dad from wondering where you are."

"Aisha, I . . . thank you," he said lamely. For wanting to be his girlfriend, for not being angry when she found out the secret he'd been keeping from her, for letting him fall asleep on top of her, for calling him equally good-looking as his two very popular friends, for helping to take care of Tom, who despite appearances was quite emotionally vulnerable, it was a long list.

She just smiled back. "You're welcome," she said. Pulling him to his feet, she kissed him one more time, then gave him a gentle push out the door.

Tom followed them out, leaning against the door, waving a lazy farewell.

He took the driver's seat of the RADBUG, Trini curled up with her eyes closed in the passenger side, and started the car up, then set it hovering. He turned in the air, grinning at Aisha's astonishment, waved at her, then after Tom prodded her, laughing, she waved back and Billy turned the car up into the air and started heading for home.

"I like her, she's good for you," Trini said unexpectedly from next to him.

Billy glanced at her. "You truly feel so?"

His primary translator smiled at him. "I do," she told him. "She makes you more confident and she makes you happy. Which are both good and important things."

"I suppose I have been somewhat worried after your cool reception to Tom," he admitted. "I know it is not entirely rational, but –"

"Neither was I," Trini admitted to him. "I sort of always thought of you as mine," she explained. "Not in a romantic sense, but . . . you always needed me there to translate, and for a while I felt like Tom was making me obsolete."

The Blue Ranger would never have expected from Trini's confident exterior. "You are my best friend," he told her. "You could never be rendered obsolete. Who else could I talk to about the Command Centre computers? Alpha? Every other sentence he makes that unnecessary exclamation."

"Ai-ai-ai-ai-ai!" they chorused, laughing.

When the moment of hilarity passed, Trini said, "I'm just glad to see you happy. Although I don't need to see you making out with her."

Rolling his eyes, he said, "You didn't have to look."

"It was a little hard not to see," she teased. "You were sort of right in the middle of the room."

"Will I be returning the sentiment regarding Richie?" he asked her.

Trini sighed at that. "I don't know," she admitted. "Richie's cute, but I'm a bit envious of Kim, and of you now." At his prompting look, she continued. "You can both be totally honest with your, respectively, boyfriend and girlfriend. No worrying about having to run out on a date with some stupid excuse no one will accept. And Richie, he's not . . . he's nice enough, but there's no strength of character there," Trini said with another sigh.

Attempting to make light of things a little, Billy said, "You could follow the suggestion of Adam's parents and seek his affections."

"I just might," Trini said. "Or maybe I should just save Zack from himself," she added, laughing a little.

That was too much. "I suspect that Zack would require far more attention spent on interests you do not have," Billy told her, "Than you want to expend."

"True enough," she said. "And I think I'll leave this conversation at that. It's probably one I should have with Kim and maybe Aisha. Not that you're not wonderful, Billy," she told him, "But you're not the best at being my best girlfriend."

They had reached Trini's home by then. "Probably not," Billy agreed. "Let me just land here and you can return to your domicile, then I'll head the rest of the way to my own."

"You just use some of the ten dollar words because you can, don't you?" Trini asked, grinning.

"Thanks for picking me up," Billy told her.

"You're welcome," she replied, shutting the door and heading down the block. Once she was safely inside, Billy sent the car skyward again.

It was remarkable, he thought as he landed it at home and headed inside. Things had changed so much over the last year. Becoming a superhero had changed everything in his world, but Tom's arrival had changed just as much. Because though he loved his friends dearly, Tom had eased that one sore spot they had unknowingly created by saying, "What? Trini?" every time he spoke. He also liked that he was creating a fighting style all his own that hybridised ninjutsu with what Tom called bare knuckle brawling. It felt good to stake out his own territory in terms of how he fought. Especially since Tom, as time wore on, seemed to prefer the technical skill sets of competitive ninjutsu in the same way that Jason favoured it in karate.

He absently greeted his father and headed upstairs to prepare for bed. If nothing else, the fact that he had fallen asleep on Adam's couch suggested he probably required more rest. Waking up to Aisha's hands in his hair had been disconcerting, albeit very pleasant.

That was another change Tom had wrought. Billy was sure he would never have met Aisha if it weren't for Tom, and he was grateful for the interference. He also chuckled a little, as he was grateful for the ability to tell Zack he didn't require help with girls, because which of them had a girlfriend again?

When he got into bed, it was to fall asleep to the questions of dating venues opened up by being able to take Aisha places in the RADBUG.

Indeed, just days later they went on a double date with Kim and Tom to the Museum of History in San Angeles, one that boasted both a natural history department and an archaeological and regular historical department. Tom had discovered an exhibit on a history of women's clothing he thought Kim and Aisha would like, and it being a museum meant there was sufficient educational content to keep himself and Tom entertained while the girls discussed matters of fashion the two males thought were too arcane for their understanding.

"Oh my God," Kim said, pointing at a concoction of pink silk and lace that Billy vaguely began to try to calculate how heavy it must be from the apparent construction of the dress. "That is _so_ gorgeous."

"That looks like it weighs more than I do," Tom muttered to Billy, echoing the Blue Ranger's thoughts.

Aisha looked at it critically. "I don't know. The bustle does maybe make you look like you got way too much junk in the trunk," she said. "But the panel in the front is beautiful."

"But the bustle was in fashion then," Kimberly countered. "It was _supposed_ to look like that." Then she turned to Tom, who looked frozen in fear. "What do you think, Tom?"

"About what, exactly?" he asked.

Billy hoped the reply would offer Tom the clarity to answer well. "About how the dress looks."

"It's . . . pink," Tom said helplessly. "And . . ." he gestured helplessly. Then he looked at Billy, who studiously turned away to look at a mourning gown, because Tom was his friend, but Billy wasn't going to go down with him. "Um . . ."

Kim rolled her eyes, then smiled even as she said, "You're useless."

"Hey," Tom said defensively, "Ask me to hit something, you've got your guy. Ask me about dinosaurs, great. Ask me about dresses, the only thing I can say is that you always look good in them."

"Nice save," Aisha said. "Kim, you have him well trained."

If ever there was a cue, that was it. "I fail to see how something such as an acknowledgement that yourself and Kim are both very lovely young women is anything other than a statement of fact," Billy said to her. "And you will forgive me, Aisha, if I do not tell Kim you are prettier than she is, as I have to go to school with her and do not wish to suffer her vengeance."

"So, you think she's prettier than me, you're just not saying it because I'll turn your gym uniform pink as soon as I can if you do," Kim said. "That's fair, she's your girlfriend."

They were interrupted by the communicators going off. As they talked to Zordon, Aisha stood guard for them, and when they came back, she offered up excuses to a few security guards about how the three had gotten into the room she was in at the time, which had no entrances other than one that was under constant surveillance.

It was the same with the other two, Tom reporting that Adam had covered for him repeatedly when he was called away to help the team and Rocky dropping by once or twice to cover for Jason's beginner classes when the Red Ranger was held up on Ranger business.

"How did you ever cope without us?" Rocky asked one day when he limped into class, unable to have a valid reason not to go, but still bruised from the latest monster. Rocky had gone very easy on him in response. "I mean, I'd've had to ask you why you were looking like you'd gone three rounds with Evander Holyfield."

"And I would have blamed bullies," Tom said shamelessly from where he had been practicing some very impressive gymnastic moves.

"Which," Rocky countered, "Is an excuse that only lasts for so long, since you'd think by now people would know that you'd flatten them if they so much as looked at Billy sideways."

"Putties, then," Billy replied. "After all, there are others who run into them."

"Most people have the sense to run away when they see them," Adam pointed out, amused. "That would have just made us wonder why you weren't running away."

"Yes, Tom," Billy said. "I seem to recall someone who wouldn't leave when he was attacked by putties." He grinned.

Tom rolled his eyes. "I'm sorry, who was it that refused to run away? I seem to recall someone in blue who had no self-defense skills hanging around in the alley _for no reason_."

Being able to joke with friends who went beyond the team, to be able to openly talk about things with someone who wasn't there, to share stories both good and bad with those friends was priceless.


	9. New Beginnings

Disclaimer: Good heavens no, I own none of this. I'd be a lot richer if I did.

Notes: And an ending of sorts. Thanks everyone for reading, reviewing, following and favouriting.

* * *

"_Hiding is futile, cowardly ranger. I'll find you sooner or-"_

"_Without your powers you don't have a chance against me, Green Ranger."_

"_Or should I just call you 'Tom'? How does it feel to be stripped of your powers forever?"_

"_You must have saved your friends a hundred times."_

"_Witness the greatness you once were, Tom, because it's all over now."_

"_After touching that crystal, I feel like I can handle one more fight."_

One last fight. One last time.

Key word, 'last'.

He hadn't said anything to the others, mostly because he didn't want to kill their high, but he didn't have any power anymore, he didn't have the amped up healing and he was hurting everywhere. The last dregs of the healing had only been good to keep the lighter bruises on his arms from showing and to keep him from the really awful stuff like internal bleeding and broken bones. The deep purple marks on his chest and back, the bone-deep weariness, a hip that had taken an ugly hit that nearly dislocated it, the shoulder that had taken the brunt of a fall he couldn't angle himself right in time to take it well, sunburn from the other dimension and myriad little scrapes all over stung, burned, throbbed, ached and just plain hurt.

Alone in his room at the Parks', Tom heard them coming and hid in the closet, praying no one would look, because he couldn't explain this, was too tired and sore and wishing Zordon had medical facilities for people who weren't hooked into the Grid. Sure they could work fine for disenchanting or other dramatic fixes, but there was no fast healing if you didn't have a working morpher.

And all Tom had was a burned out power coin.

Hearing a discontented muttering from the elder Parks, Tom waited, exhaustion knocking him out despite the discomfort of the small space, lying on top of some shoes and other paraphernalia. He woke with a start when the door opened, spilling him out into his room.

"I thought I heard – Jesus, Tom! What the hell happened?" Adam demanded.

He'd stiffened up while hiding, and he could barely move to help Adam as he was dragged onto the bed. "Sorry. I didn't think I could explain this to your parents," he groaned. "When they got to the door I panicked."

"Okay," Adam said. "That explains the closet, it doesn't explain why you look like you got chewed up and spat out."

That surprised a laugh out of Tom. "That's oddly accurate. I only had one fight left. Zedd got the bulk of my powers and this was it," he said, leaning back against the wall, slowly trying to work the kinks out. "I had to let Turbanshell eat me and burn him up from the inside."

"You . . . that thing _ate_ you?" Adam demanded. "You were morphed, though, right?"

"One last time," Tom said, smiling a little. Then he felt his bravado crumble. "I just . . . it's hard. You can't understand how hard it is when you can do something, when you've been able to help, I mean, be right there and help and now . . ." Tears threatened. "I don't want . . . I didn't want to get the others down. They had their powers taken away and spent all day trying to rescue me and Alpha and Zordon. They'll have to go right back out there again the next time Zedd attacks. I just . . ."

"Mom and Dad were coming up to tell you that we're taking a vacation up to Seattle," Adam said. "We've got family up there and Grandmother wants to meet you because you're almost sort of one of the family now. You can get some space that way, but you're going to have to talk to the rest of the team at some point, you know."

"I know," Tom said. "I just . . . I'll start hovering over Billy and Kim again, I'll freak myself out watching reports, and this time there's no power left. At least last time I was leaving Jason with the Dragonzord. Now, they don't even have that."

He'd half forgotten how badly bruised he was, and Tom had his shirt peeled off before he recalled his chest and back were a rather unnatural shade of black and purple. "Tom!" It was Ada. "My God, what happened?"

"He got caught in the monster attack in Angel Grove," Adam said on his behalf. "He was trying to help the evacuation and . . ." he let his mother fill in the blanks.

"Graham! Forget the pizza! We're going to the emergency room!" she half ran out of the room, and Tom stared after her.

"Emergency room?" he asked. "Nothing's broken, I'm fine."

Adam snorted. "You look like you got stepped on by the monster," he said. "Now come on. Let's get you looked at by a doctor."

He pulled on a button down flannel shirt that was comfortable and soft and would have made Kim have a conniption fit if she'd seen it. He sighed, heading slowly for the stairs, Adam following behind making sarcastic comments about just how fine Tom was. "Okay, I get it," he told his friend. "I'm not fine. Now would you stop saying I'm suffering from a nervous system malfunction?"

"Well, you're trying to claim nothing's wrong, which means you can't feel the bruises, so-"

"I didn't say nothing was wrong, I said I was fine."

"If you're fine, then nothing's wrong. You're only fine if nothing's wrong."

"Something can be wrong and your state can be adequate for going on with, which is fine," Tom argued. "So, I'm fine."

"You're not fine," Ada said briskly, "You're hurt and badly and you're going to the hospital. Tom, stop encouraging him, Adam, stop twitting Tom. Both of you get in the car."

Tom stifled a groan as he got into the back seat. Adam smirked at him, mouthing, "Fine."

If he hadn't known he wasn't up to it, he'd've hit his friend. But Adam would retaliate, and Tom knew better than to start a losing fight with a black belt. At least, not when nothing was on the line but his pride. Still, he narrowed his eyes at Adam and hissed, "You don't need to rub it in."

"See, not fine," Adam said cheerily. "You would have hit me if you were fine."

"I could still do it," Tom threatened.

"Are you six, the pair of you?" asked Ada as she and Graham joined them. "Really, I thought once kids got to be teenagers the whole, 'He hit me/She bit me/He says he's gonna get me,' thing wore off."

"Did you just quote Animaniacs?" Tom asked, aghast.

Graham shrugged. "That was just like every cross-country car trip I went on with my sisters," he commented.

"Same here," said Ada. "Really, that was one of the positives of only having the one child," she mused.

The rest of the car ride was accomplished in silence, the boys not wanting to be subject to Tales of Parental Childhoods Past. Once at the emergency room, Tom had stiffened up again and grit his teeth as he got out of the car, refusing to be helped. He caught sight of Adam opening his mouth again, probably to say something sarcastic about being fine, which he totally was, thankyouverymuch, when his mother shot a look at him. Adam's mouth shut without saying anything.

Tom would have laughed, but his chest and back hurt too much to. Instead he just followed the Parks into the hospital. "Name?" asked the nurse in triage.

"Tom Oliver," Tom said.

"What seems to be the trouble?" she asked.

"I'm fine," Tom told her. "I'm here under protest."

Graham sighed. "Ada, you actually saw the problem."

"He's covered in bruises," Ada said, shooting Tom an irritated look. "And by that I mean his whole chest and back look pretty much black. Literally."

Then, to Tom's great embarrassment she yanked his shirt up before he could prevent her. The nurse's eyes went wide and she said, "Right. Sit down and we'll call you as soon as we can."

His name was called way before a whole bunch of other people who totally deserved help faster than him. "What happened?" asked the doctor as he looked at Tom's chest, pressing on it and making him hiss in pain.

"I got caught in a monster attack in Angel Grove," Tom said. "I just took a few hits, I'm _fine_."

The doctor shot him a disbelieving look. "Right. I've ordered x-rays to be taken and some blood tests and we'll see after that."

As the man left, Tom complained, "But I'm _fine_."

"You're an idiot," Rocky said cheerfully from the curtained opening to the cubbyhole that was passing for a room at that moment. "Put a shirt on, unless you want to bowl Aisha over with your manly physique."

"Shut up, Rocky," Tom said. It wasn't witty, but that wasn't necessary. "Why are you here, anyhow?"

"Adam called," Rocky said. "He said you were being an idiot again."

"For people who are trying so hard to tell me I'm not dumb all the time, you do a pretty bad job the rest of the time at trying to keep convincing me of it."

Graham cleared his throat. He'd been so silent Tom had forgotten the man was there in his role as legal guardian of a minor. "How about you get dressed again and you can sit and wait for the x-rays with your friends."

Tom sighed, making a face, but settling down to wait. When Billy showed up trailing Aisha, he groaned. "What part of not telling the others is hard to get? I'm _fine_."

"I will not dignify that statement with a response," Billy said dryly. "I will however tell you that Kimberly is most unhappy that you did not immediately seek medical attention, and more that you pretended you were well when you were not. If she did not have familial obligations she could not escape she would be here to tell you herself."

For a moment, Tom missed the old days when he was the only one who worried about him. When he could pretty much do whatever he wanted so long as he didn't get the attention of social services. Then his conscience reminded him of never taking martial arts classes and empty days in which he didn't fit anywhere. Even if this was really annoying, because he was _fine_, he couldn't regret this. "Tell her I'm fine and I just . . . I need some space. After . . . everything," he said, mindful of the possibilities of listening ears, "I need to get my head on straight. I freaked last time, I don't want to do it again."

"I understand," Billy said, smiling. Then the smile fell away. "That doesn't mean I'll be leaving until we are certain you are _actually_ fine."

Adam popped up, saying, "His definition of 'fine' is apparently, 'not bleeding to death'."

"Which is my point," Tom tried again. "I'm not bleeding to death, I'm _fine._ I didn't say great, I said _fine_."

"Do you think if you repeat that enough we're going to stop being worried about the fact that you look like you got stepped on by an elephant?" Aisha asked.

He sighed. "I can hope."

The nurse showed up and towed him away for x-rays. He had bruised ribs, which didn't surprise him, a few strains, which didn't surprise him and a minor concussion, which did. He hadn't even really noticed the headache with everything else until they mentioned he should have one.

He was prescribed some painkillers and told to take it easy and to see a doctor in a few weeks to be sure nothing had cropped up in the meanwhile.

After everything he was taken to the doors of the hospital in a wheelchair, which was humiliating because he could walk just fine, thanks. Then after he was home with the Parks, he was told to go lie down and stay in bed. When he was up the next morning, still wondering even months later about the enforced family breakfast, he was greeted with startled looks from Ada and Graham. Adam just rolled his eyes and passed the bacon.

"So, Adam said that his grandmother wants to see me, and that means you want me to come with you to a family . . . something-or-other in Seattle," Tom asked, wanting to avoid dealing with any more invalid treatment. He was fine, seriously. "Is she like the mater familias or something, or is this just . . . assuaging curiosity?"

"You've spent too much time with Billy," Adam said. "Assuaging curiosity? Mater familias? What's mater familias anyhow?"

Tom paused, "Actually, _is_ that even a word?" he asked Graham, who tended to know at least some of the answers to those questions. "I mean, pater familias is a Roman thing, but with it being so patriarchal as a society that . . . what?"

"Too much time with Billy," Adam repeated, stabbing his fork at Tom.

Ada shot her son a Look. "First, do not use your fork like that, it's an eating utensil, not verbal punctuation," she said to Adam. "Second, I will not have you discourage Tom from scholastic success just because you can't be bothered to crack open your SAT study books." She smiled at Tom. "That reminds me," she said. "The school wanted to talk to us about shifting you into AP classes with Adam."

"What?" Tom said, eyes wide. "That's . . . I . . . AP? Me?"

"I don't know why you're so shocked," Ada told him. "Your grades have been excellent to the point where it's fairly clear you're not being challenged."

The elder Parks had instituted a policy early on with Tom that he bring home all his tests so they could be aware of how he was doing. Tom had long since stopped even looking at his grades unless a teacher made him have to. "They have?"

"You've been getting straight As," Graham told him, looking disbelieving.

"I have?"

"Have you even looked at your grades?" Adam asked him curiously.

". . . No."

Ada and Graham exchanged looks and she got up, vanished out the kitchen door, coming back a few minutes later with a stack of paper that was his assignments and tests. Tom started to leaf through them. The earliest had been Cs. Within a few weeks his grades had gone up to Bs, then to As and then had stayed As except for some outlier Bs. He hadn't looked at his papers in so long because it was depressing to see the parade of near-failing grades.

"That's what happens when you do the work," Graham told him smugly.

Adam sighed. "We told you you're not stupid," he said. "Tom, seriously, do you really think Billy of all people would hang out with someone stupid? Or are you going to insist it's pity again?"

He didn't have any answer to that.

* * *

"Billy! Phone!"

Picking up the receiver, Billy was greeted by Tom asking, "Did you know? I mean, did Adam tell you? Because I didn't think . . . why did Adam even care about my grades?"

"Tom," Billy said with what he thought was commendable patience, "Perhaps you might commence your inquisition at the start so that I know what it is that you are asking me about."

"Right," Tom said. There was a long pause, then he blurted out, "The teachers at Stone Canyon think I should be in AP classes."

Grinning ear to ear, Billy said, "Congratulations, Tom. Perhaps we can discuss course choices at some point. Given your interest in paleontology there are some specific courses that may well stand you in good stead for university -"

"University?" Tom sounded panicked. "Billy! This is AP! I've never done well in school! I don't know what happened!"

This again. "Tom, how often had I informed you that your capabilities were far greater than reflected in your grades?" Billy asked.

"I thought it was that whole alternate intelligence thing," Tom said. "You know, some people are book smart and some people are good at hitting things and I'm-"

"Good at both to the detriment of your terrible self-image," Billy interrupted. "Tom, I told you when I was first assigned to tutor you that you had demonstrated nothing that was indicative of a lower intellect than average. I knew once you began speaking about the dinosaurian debates on endothermy that you are highly intelligent. You have to let this go. Adam mentioned his family was taking you to Seattle for a few weeks. Take the time to think about it. I'm right about this and you know it. How often am I wrong?"

"Every time you argue crocodilian ancestry and dinosaurs just to annoy me," Tom said, trying to be humorous.

Billy rolled his eyes. "That is not a valid example."

"I guess," Tom sounded doubtful. "I'm just kinda tired of everything turning upside down."

"What do you mean?" Billy asked. He suspected, but thought it might be better for Tom to put into words what had made him overset. Further, it would be helpful to know what precisely the problem was, rather than an approximation.

"Man, I just . . . I knew who I was, you know?" Tom said, sounding frustrated. "I was that kid who was going to pump gas and wind up in prison for assault. I knew that, I'd made my peace with it, y'know? Then I come here and you . . . you became my friend and everything just . . . changed. And I don't want it to go back," Tom added hastily, "But every time I've gotten a grip on things, it's all changed on me. First with you, then with being a Power Ranger, then with the team and then being normal and then a Ranger again." He sighed. "I didn't think I'd ever have a family again either, and now the Parks are taking me out to meet Adam's grandmother in Seattle because I've been sort-of adopted."

Nodding even though Tom couldn't see, Billy said, "And on receiving the news that your intellect is not what you thought it was, it has become too much?"

"I just want the universe to stop pulling the rug out from under my feet," Tom grumbled.

"You know my advice on the matter," Billy informed him.

Tom sighed again. "I know. I'm just worried something else will happen while I'm gone. The last time I left Angel Grove I wound up being thrown at the Parks."

"After being beaten," Billy reminded him.

"That part wasn't the shock," Tom replied. "Having someone insist on coming back with me and stuff, that was the weird part."

It was a sad commentary on Tom's life that he would say such a thing. "There will come a time, Tom, when others offering help will not seem a break with normalcy," Billy told him.

"Maybe," Tom said, dubious. There was the sound of the elder Parks telling Tom he'd been on the telephone long enough, and Tom said, "I guess I gotta go, Billy. I'll . . . well, I'll talk to you again soon. Maybe I'll write while I'm gone."

"I'll look forward to it," Billy told him.

They said their farewells and hung up.

Tom was as good as his word, writing to both Billy and Kimberly. Billy usually read the letters aloud to the others at the youth centre, while Kimberly tended to read only short excerpts from hers. Zack stole a letter once, but after reading only a few lines handed it back, evidently hugely embarrassed at something he'd seen in its contents.

Adam had written to Rocky, who passed along Adam's impressions of Tom's escapades, most of which seemed to centre on storytelling to the younger members of the family about the Power Rangers, dinosaurs and a great many tourist traps like the second biggest ball of twine in the States. He also spent a lot of time forgetting the names of nearly everyone he met, repeatedly.

They were eagerly awaiting Tom's return when Billy found out about Zordon and Alpha's new project, creating a new Ranger power. He told the others, then got in the RADBUG, heading straight out to Stone Canyon to talk to Adam.

He tracked the trio down at the park and asked, anxiously, "Do you know where Tom is?

"No," Aisha answered. "Adam?"

"No," Adam said. "He's been a little . . . secretive, but I think he's still dealing with everything. Not to mention, Mom and Dad are talking about a transfer to Angel Grove."

Billy sighed. "Well, I guess it's good he's not here right now, because I really need to talk to you," he said. "I just found out, I don't think I was supposed to, but Zordon and Alpha are making a new Ranger Power," he told them. "I don't know how we're going to tell Tom. I don't want him to find out from the news when some new Ranger just shows up, but . . ." he looked helplessly at them.

Rocky looked irritated. "So, what? Tom was a great Power Ranger. Why aren't they making _him_ into the new replacement?"

"I don't know," Billy said. "I just saw this door open in the Command Centre I'd never seen before. When I went through it, I saw Alpha in another room, talking to Zordon about the new Ranger and how they were constructing his or her powers."

"Well, maybe you'd better wait until you know more," Adam said. "As much as we should tell Tom as soon as possible, I don't want to get him upset over something when it's not the right information."

Billy wondered as the new White Ranger took his helmet off, what Tom would think. Then he saw Tom smiling at him in the new white uniform and nearly toppled over in relief. "We were worried what we'd tell you when the new Ranger was revealed," Billy said later, once the mess with Nimrod and Rita and Bulk and Skull just being themselves had ended. "I had stumbled across Alpha and Zordon creating your new powers, and without the knowledge they were making them for you, it seemed as though we would have to tell you that you had been replaced."

"Yeah, I probably wouldn't have taken it that well," admitted Tom. "Luckily that's not the case."

"I'd just gotten used to the idea I wouldn't have to cover for you anymore," Adam grumbled good-naturedly.

"It could be worse," Zack said with a grin. "He's having arguments with his new sword. Literally. Man, the jokes I can come up with for that . . ." he laughed.

Rocky snorted. "Arguments with his sword? This I can't wait to hear."

The others chattered on about the new development, but Billy wanted to know something. "Tom?" he asked as he pulled his friend aside. "You mentioned once that Zordon said you shouldn't have been the Green Ranger. Is this . . ." he trailed off, uncertain of what he wanted to ask.

Tom's smile made some indefinable shift. He'd looked happy, yes, but there was something oddly content about the look that was different than anything Billy had seen before. "Whenever I used the Green Coin," he explained, "There was always something that . . . I can't quite describe it," he said. "It's like when you're wearing a sweater that doesn't quite fit or maybe . . . having a cup of coffee that doesn't have quite enough cream or sugar in it. It's good, nice even, but it's just not _right._"

Billy frowned as he considered the metaphor. "Interesting concept."

"Not that I could have really told you that for sure, before, because without a comparison for all I knew it was supposed to be like that," Tom continued. "But now, the power, it just . . . fits."

Nodding his understanding, Billy said, "I do wonder what it would be like to . . . to try a different colour, I mean, now that I understand the significance so much more."

"Oh, really?" Tom asked with a grin. "Want to try out Black? Or maybe Red? We could always ask Jason and Zack if they're willing to do the experiment."

His internal sense of Blueness immediately balked even as his intellectual curiosity was piqued. "I see what you mean," he said, eyes wide.

"Hey! You guys coming?" Jason called. "We were gonna put together a game of basketball!"

"Great!" Aisha called. "Kim and I are on the opposite team from Billy and Tom!"

"Why's that?" demanded Rocky and Adam in a suspicious chorus.

"Because boys are easy to distract," Kim said cheerfully, flouncing over to Aisha.

As the Power Rangers and their friends spilled out onto the court arguing about teams, all was right with the world, the Ranger team was whole again, and they were all the stronger for the troubles of the past.

So, Billy took a deep breath and squared his shoulders as they stepped out into their future.


End file.
